


Metempsychosis

by AccioRavenclaw



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-06-23 08:41:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15602604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccioRavenclaw/pseuds/AccioRavenclaw
Summary: The cycle begins with Amell, nobility until the magic manifests.  Bitter and Proud, he makes all the wrong choices.They don't yet know that they'll keep coming back, again and again.  There are many lessons to be learned through the cycle of reincarnation from one life to the next.  Each of them has a part to play, a lesson to learn, until they finally end the Blight.It takes seven lifetimes for them to finally get it right.





	1. Amell

Daylen is on the cusp of being a teenager when he’s brought to the circle. Red faced, jaw and fists clenched as the Templars drag him from the Amell home. Worse was his mother’s sobbing, chasing after him in the streets and pleading – _begging_ for them not to take him. 

Shameful, he thinks. Amells do not beg. That had been one of the lessons his parents had taught him; proper behavior for one who was supposed to inherit the family estate and title. 

But mages cannot inherit estates or hold any kind of title. Not in Kirkwall nor anywhere in Ferelden. It’s all been a waste of time.

Daylen doesn’t hold a wooden sword and shield anymore, or attend private lessons in the family courtyard. Now his lessons are public, under the watchful eyes of Templars and senior enchanters, and involve how to properly handle a staff and channel magic through it.

He is twelve and as time stretches by he settles into a routine. He buries his head in his studies, until he meets Jowan. 

“Hello,” the boy says one evening in the library. Amell looks up from his book and glares at him. There is no one else around, except for the Templar who stands guard at the door, and he had picked this corner of the library because he specifically wanted to be alone. Something this boy seems to have either ignored or been oblivious to. 

“Mind if I sit here?” the boy asks, indicating to the same bench seat. There are plenty of other places to sit beside the very bench Amell is sitting on, but he doesn’t say that. Just shrugs and goes back to reading.

“Okay. Thanks,” the boy says as he takes a seat and then launches into a rambling conversation. An entirely one sided one until he pauses, “oh, sorry for interrupting.” As though he didn’t notice Amell reading.

“Its fine,” Amell says as they finally settle back into the silence of the library. 

It wouldn’t be a problem if the boy could just sit still. Shifting in his seat every thirty seconds, fidgeting with pages, tapping his feat. Amell tries not to pay attention, tries to focus on the words in the book in his own hands, but it’s nearly impossible. 

“Hey so," the boy says before Amell can get up to find a different spot to read. "You’ve been here awhile and I noticed you don’t talk a lot.” 

“Yeah,” Amell says, not bothering to look up and flipping a page for emphasis.

“What are you reading?” the boy asks, trying to peer over the edge of the book to see what’s on the page.

Amell holds the book higher to show him the cover. “The Hierarchy of the Circle.” He may not inherit a title or his family estate, but he can work his way through the ranks of the Circle. He is an Amell, he is proper and has what his father liked to refer to as “standing”, and being a mage cannot take that away from him. 

He will not let that be taken away from him.

“Wow, uh, that’s cool.” The boy says after an awkward moment. “You must be really smart.” 

“I am,” he says without a moment’s hesitation. He knows it’s true; he had good tutors before the Circle. His parents could afford the private education. In lessons he knows he is leaps and bounds above some of his classmates.

“That’s cool.” The boy says and they continue to sit there till the Templars call curfew. 

Amell thinks that’s the end of it, until the following morning when the boy sits across from him at breakfast.

“Good morning!” he says. His greasy hair is still uncombed. “Do you mind if I sit with you?” 

Amell endures the following conversation. “Where are you from?”, “Do you miss it?”, what do you think of this Templar or that Apprentice? The boy is annoying, but not bad enough for Amell to get up and leave. And even then he knows that’s not really a solution. There’s only so much space in the Tower and they’re both stuck here so he might as well play nice.

“We can be friends, right?” The boy asks suddenly mid meal, around a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

“Yeah,” Amell hesitantly says. “We can be friends.”

The boy’s eyes light up. Amell suspects that he is probably the first "friend" this boy has ever had. The boy sticks out his hand, “I’m Jowan.” 

Amell reaches across the table and gives his hand a shake, firm and proper. “I’m Amell. Daylen Amell.”

From that moment on his presence becomes something of a constant in his life. At every meal, at every free hour, at every study hall, and at every lesson.

* * *

Over the years, Amell continues to tolerate his new friend. Jowan isn’t smart and he certainly isn’t very good at magic either. Which he could be if he could focus on his studies for more than five seconds at a time. Instead he finds trouble and more often than not spends time being yelled at by Senior Enchanters and Templars alike.

Compared to him, Amell is leaps and bounds beyond him. But that's not a surprise to him.

To Amell, Jowan is the kind of person his father would’ve considered well beneath his standing. Unfortunately, mages do not get to sort out the _right kind_ of people to be friends with. Just as beggars cannot be choosers, Amell has no power over who he shares the Circle with. So Amell puts up with the whining that inevitably comes his way when Jowan comes crawling to him with each and every problem.

Until his Harrowing. The night within the Fade with the rat scurrying around in his dream. The rat - demon - who feigned friendship while seeking out weakness. But Amell doesn't fail. Of course he doesn't because there was never any question of his success. He is an Amell and though he is a mage, he will not fall beneath his standing. 

He returns to bed, triumphant and prideful and ready to sleep in peace. Until Jowan is there.

Amell is at the end of his rope of patience as Jowan tries to pry information. He is rambling off his own list of fears and anxieties about how worried he is for his own Harrowing. As though Amell cares. He certainly does not; he’s a full mage now and has other duties and responsibilities to occupy himself with.

He has excitement for a bright future ahead of him. And he expects that Jowan, with his knack for finding trouble and ignoring studies, will end up Tranquil. Jowan will probably fall to the rat in the Fade, or any other spirit that dangles something tempting in front of him. It is not a fate he takes pleasure in, but perhaps he’ll have some quiet for the first time in ten years.

But Jowan will not leave him be over the following days. He has some Chantry girl, Lily, who has told him the harsh truth herself and has hatched up a scheme of escape. And Amell sits there listening to him explain about the phylactery and the blood magic. 

Amell’s eyes narrow. “Is that true?” Ten years. He has known Jowan for ten _long_ years and not once has he known or ever suspected Jowan of being the worst of their kind. The reason why Templars watch them for every waking hour and why they lock mages in the Circle to begin with. 

“Of course not,” Jowan says with the slightest hesitation to his voice, his eyes flicking to the side as the words spill from his mouth. 

And Amell knows it is a lie.

* * *

He tells Irving. He will not take punishment for failing to report it. He has a duty to the Circle and he has no second thoughts or doubts. Blood magic will never be tolerated.

Except Irving tells him to go with them. Amell has a duty, he isn’t in a place to question his orders. What does he care if the Chantry likes to think of itself as perfect? What does he care if Lily should be punished alongside Jowan?

But he is an Amell and he has a responsibility to do this. So he runs through the familiar corridors of the Tower, fighting guards, and tolerating Jowan and his idiotic girlfriend. Of course Amell is the only one of their trio who’s decent in a fight. And by decent, he means at least he knows some combat magic. Jowan, always struggling with his magic, never learned to shoot a bolt of energy straight. 

But practice and theory are two very different things. Amell might know the theory behind the spells and how to cast them, but it doesn’t make much difference when his fire balls don’t fly much straighter than Jowan’s.

But they’re successful because of him. Jowan crushes his phylactery. “I’m free now!” Jowan says. “Lily, we’re free!” 

Amell stands off to the side and waits. Whatever Irving’s plan and reasons, things will be over and his life will go back to a steady normal that he’s known for the past ten years. He’ll work his way up to First Enchanter someday. It might even happen sooner now that life is about to be quieter.

* * *

He is sitting in a boat being rowed out across Lake Calenhad, to the docks he hasn’t walked across since the time the Templars brought him to the Circle. He’s sitting with Duncan, the Grey Warden and only reason he’s still alive.

Nothing ever goes according to plan, he thinks bitterly. He’s being shipped to Ostagar. He’s going to be a Grey Warden. 

“You have an opportunity few ever dream of. Do not squander it.” Irving had said as a way of farewell. 

Opportunity, Amell sneers. Then why does it feel like a punishment. 

And an easier punishment than whatever Knight-Commander Greagoir had in mind at that.

He was supposed to be getting ready to enjoy life as a full mage within the Circle. A life of peace within the Circle. Now he’s off to fight the Blight or whatever other cursed thing they tell him to shoot fire at.

* * *

It’s a joke that Amell survives Ostagar. Where so many better equipped and skilled Wardens perished on the front lines. He was only spared because he was sent to light that stupid beacon. Even then he only survived because Morrigan’s mother came to his rescue and bothered to nurse him back to health. 

The Witch of the Wilds. More like a madwoman who speaks in riddles. Amell still has a headache from the last time they spoke, retrieving the Warden treaties.

“The Blight is bigger than you realize,” she’d said. But when pressed for more information, she had laughed. “Either the threat is more, or they realize less…or perhaps the threat is nothing.” 

However, in return for her help she had pushed her daughter on him, which he was less than happy about. He’s only free of the Circle by a small legal technicality. 

It’s like we’re both Apostates, he thinks bitterly. We might as well be.

He is an Amell, an excellent Circle mage and worthy of so much more than Morrigan and Alistair. But in a series of short days he’s gone lower than ever before: kicked from the Circle, made into a Grey Warden, and now a wanted man set to travel with an apostate to find a way to build an army to fight the Blight.

* * *

Things do not improve after Lothering. 

Amell is not very good at being outside the Tower. His feet blister on the road and his skin burns in the sun. Facts that Morrigan mocks him for. After a decade in the Circle he isn’t built for the outside anymore. More than that, it’s the people. He’s not very good at speaking to other people when he hasn’t known them all his adolescent life. No matter what he says, people leer and sneer at him everywhere he goes. The prejudice of being a mage, he thinks. 

The Qunari he left in the cage at the edge of town. The man had made it clear he didn’t want to come along. Amell wishes the same were true of Leliana: she had forced herself and her religious nonsense upon his group. He has known many Chantry sisters, none have compared to the red haired Orlesian. 

But they tell him that a group of four is better than three, but Amell longs for the peace of the Tower’s library. The worst he had to deal with was the strict eye of the Templars and the irritation of Jowan’s ever-present company. He didn’t have to put up with people he didn't know how to socially navigate.

Morrigan grates on him more than the others. Her constant chatter and sniping makes him think of Jowan, and his jaw clenches.

* * *

His jaw hurts by the time he finally reaches Redcliffe. But he hasn't turned his companions into campfire kindling yet, so he feels he should be praised for his patience.

It’s not his fault when things go to shit. It wasn’t his job to rally the townsfolk or solve their problems for them. It’s their own fault for not fighting their own battles, for giving up on themselves. What was he supposed to do for a drunken blacksmith and an angry dwarf who barricaded himself inside his home?

Why do people think he is responsible for their lives? They are mistaken if they do, for certainly he is not. He is an Amell, with a duty and responsibility as a Grey Warden to stop the Blight, that doesn't mean solving every single problem people try to drop at his feet. 

But now there are so many of the townspeople dead and he’s walking through the Redcliffe dungeons. Until he comes to a cell with a figure inside with a familiar voice. For a gut wrenching moment Amell watches Jowan step forward from the shadows.

“It’s you!” he says, eyes bright. His hair is still uncombed. "You betrayed me!" 

Amell swears he can feel one of his teeth crack, his jaw clenches so hard. It takes no time for conversation to turn into shouting. Back and forth, for the better part of a half hour they argue before he finally manages to get Jowan to say anything useful about the castle. He admits that he poisoned the Arl on orders from Loghain. Amell listens as he explains how he used his status as an apostate to get close to Isolde and Connor in order to do it. 

Amell doesn’t care that Isolde tortured him. Serves him right, he bitterly thinks. 

“Just stay here,” Amell says as he stomps off to find a way upstairs. “I’ll sort the mess out, like I always do.”

* * *

He sorts it out, but not like he always does. In the Circle it was easier to clean up the messes that Jowan left for him to fix. Those problems were cleaner, easier to mend with magic and support. This one, not so much.

He’s standing awkwardly to the side as Lady Isolde clings to Connor's body. The demon had attacked him first, it was self-defense. He did what he had to, what his duty was, but it’s hard to convince himself of that fact as Lady Isolde screams over her son's body. 

Alistair is shouting something at him too. Amell doesn’t really pay attention to him over the woman’s hysterical screeching. He'd thought her whining was bad before, outside the windmill. Now he knows better, has something else to compare it too, and knows that this is worse.

But no one likes to listen to him. No one likes to hear him say the truth: The boy was an abomination. The foolish boy had given himself over to a demon and his foolish mother had kept him from the Circle. He's not to blame. It's not his fault that other people made poor choices. It's not his fault that they did not follow the law or that they hired an apostate to try to hide Connor's magic. 

Unable to listen any longer, he turns and leaves abruptly. He doesn’t look back. He still needs the Arl. He still has a mess to sort out. 

He is an Amell and he will.

He always does.

* * *

It takes time. By the time Amell returns to Redcliffe, he has witnessed the Rite of Annulment. He chose the side of the Templars because he knows there is no argument. There is duty and there is responsibility, and if the Circle fell to the foolishness of one man then so be it. It only takes one mage, as he knows so well. 

And it cost him Morrigan’s company, as the two of them had screamed at each other in the Tower. She had turned into a raven as Amell shouted, "Good riddance!" 

Furthermore, there will be no elves in his army, but werewolves can rip darkspawn apart as good as any arrow or sword. What does he care for a couple hundred years old curse? Let the wolves have their vengeance. It helped him out of the damned forest quicker. 

It just also happened to be the last straw for Zevran. Serves him right for going against his better judgment and allowing a would-be assassin to accompany him. Amell had left his frozen body behind at their campsite as they moved on along the road. 

But this time, when Amell returns to Redcliffe castle, it’s with the Ashes and Arl Eamon is alive. Amell thinks that after all the trouble of getting those ashes – Haven, the Cult, climbing the Maker-be-damned mountains – he should be grateful.

When Arl Eamon rewards him with a title of Champion, Amell knows what to ask for: the whole purpose of coming to this backwater village to start with. When Arl Eamon says that he’ll have his support in the Landsmeet that is to come, Amell finally feels like something is going right for the first time since leaving the Circle Tower. 

It’s a short lived feeling when the Arl summons Jowan for judgment. Amell is still standing there when they bring him up in chains. It leaves him feeling some emotion he cannot name burning inside him as Jowan stands there and asks for no mercy. He’s just going to let them kill him.

He’s going to make a mess of everything again. 

The Arl asks his opinion and Amells only says, “He seems earnest in his desire to repent.” The remark brings a room of raised eyebrows down upon him. And when pressed further, Amell suggests Jowan being handed over to the Wardens. He needs people to fight for him. 

The idea isn't even entertained as an argument breaks out. The shouting going back and forth between Alistair, Eamon, and himself. Jowan is a traitor, an attempted murderer, and above all else: a maleficar. They will not let him go. So finally he relents, he suggests handing Jowan back over to the Templars. It's their job to handle such cases anyway.

He knows it is not mercy. There are only two possibilities for his future: tranquility or death. But it is duty and responsibility that presses him to make the suggestion anyway. Duty to the Circle, the laws that govern him, and to a man who never angered at him like the rest of his rat-tag group seem quick to do.

It is a suggestion that is not entertained either. It only angers Amell more. No one has listened to him at all since he left the Circle. Not once. It does not matter how many times he cleans up other people's messes; they are never satisfied. He is neither persuasive nor intimidating, so people do not listen. And now, standing in the Arl's castle, it only wounds his pride. 

_I fixed his mess! You are alive because of me and what I have done!_ Amell wants to scream. He wants this to go his way. He wants them to do as he says, just this once. 

But it doesn't happen. Jowan smiles sadly and _apologizes_ for having it end this way. Like it’s an inconvenience for Amell. It is, but he didn’t think Jowan would know it. Ten years in the Circle together and perhaps Jowan knows more about him than he cared to think.

“Goodbye Daylen,” he says as they lead him away to the headsman’s axe. “Thank you for being my friend.”

Amell says nothing, only clenches his jaw and refuses to make eye contact.

* * *

The Deep Roads are dark and narrow. It’s perfect for the hordes of darkspawn that have surrounded them. After everything involved in reaching the Anvil and helping Branka get her hands on it, it seems only fitting that he won’t survive the journey back. 

Amell is a mage with a staff and a preference for distance. Now it is all he can do to keep up with the multitude of arms and swords that reach out for him: ready to devour him. To block and push with his staff when he should be summoning forth fire, frost, _anything_.

He is alone now. He can’t hear Oghren’s battle shouts. Alistair fell days ago to one of the ogres as they crossed the bridge. And Leliana left before they reached Orzammar, on the road from Redcliffe. After Jowan she had screamed this wasn’t the path the Maker had shown her. 

Amell falls, tired and battered and beaten. Just so, so _tired_.

The darkspawn horde is upon him in an instant. They rip at any flesh they can reach, teeth sink in just as nails and swords do. He has mage robes, not armor, and they make very quick work of ripping him apart. He's still conscious enough as they begin to devour him. As screams echo off the cavern walls.

In the end, there isn’t enough time for regrets or to count his multitude of wrongs, but enough time to remember a last goodbye as his childhood friend walked to his death.  
  
There’s enough time to realize that not once did he ever say:

“I- I’m… sssss…orry” the words crack and bubble with his last shuddering, painful breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I like to think about Leandra Hawke. We know she is from the Amell family before she married and that she talks about the family estate and money a lot in the opening of DA2. I imagine an Amell Warden would've been beginning to be groomed to inherit all of that and be very disappointed when they find out they never will. Or at lest this that's how this Amell feels about it.


	2. Brosca

Natia is born deep within the earth and close to the Stone itself. The irony is that she is casteless. Her brand, received moments after her birth, is below her right eye. It almost looks like an “S” from the surface books Rica sometimes reads. 

Since her first steps in Dust Town, she has never felt right. Like some part of her is missing. At night she lays in her shared bed with Rica and feels like she should be dreaming. Except that dwarves do not dream. Of that she, and everyone she asks who will speak to her, is sure. But sometimes she thinks that she does, of places and things she doesn’t have the words to describe. Nothing clear, just a vagueness that leaves her feeling misplaced some mornings.

But she has more important things to be concerned with besides trying to fill her head with stories of dreams. This is Dust Town, a crumbling ruin where once an old palace used to be – if the Shaperate is to be believed (and it is to be believed) – and the only casteless here that hold authority do so through sheer strength and force of will. 

And Natia has been fighting since she was old enough to hold a dagger. She’s fought tooth and nail, and clawed her way into the Carta. Because someone in her family has to. Her older sister, Rica, is the pretty one; as her drunken mother constantly reminds her. Her mother spends her days uselessly drunk, laying on the pallet bed in the room they call home.

The only reason they still have a roof over their heads and don’t sleep on the streets of Dust Town is because she earns the coin in service to the Carta: to Beraht. A man of the Merchant Caste who is grooming Rica to be a noble hunter while Natia undergoes a formal training of her own kind. 

While Rica learns to read, to sing, to dance, to sew; Natia learns to pick locks, to wield daggers, and how to move properly in armor.

* * *

Natia dons the armor breastplate while Leske drags Everd to the closet. 

“By the Stone, this is so bad.” He says, looking at her with the helmet in her hands. “Do you know what they’ll do to you – us – if we’re caught?” 

“I know, but do you have any other bright ideas?”

“Public whipping, for starters.” Leske replies. “Loss of you left hand for stealing the armor. Then the loss of your right hand for befouling a smith’s work.” 

“Leske – “ 

“There’s the public flaying for impersonating a higher caste,” he continues. “And if that doesn’t kill you, they’ll put you to death for polluting the Proving.” 

“Beraht will kill us too if he loses that bet.” Natia snaps back, stomach sinking. She’s spent her life with a blade in her hand, as good as any other of the Warrior Caste. 

Outside the signal is given and the time to decide is upon her. She places the helmet on her head, over her eyes, and grabs the sword on her way out.

Time to see if the Ancestors think she’s really worth nothing.

* * *

The sky is… well, there is so _much_ of it. Vast and endless and she feels like she could get lost in it. It’s not the solid Stone of Orzammar, but there is some quality that is familiar about it. Almost nauseating, but she thinks that’s just a side effect of the blazing sun; which now she’ll just have to get used to.

Sitting on the back of a cart, heading southeast to Ostagar, she feels like there is a lot she’ll have to get used to. 

The name sounds familiar. A vague enough feeling to be unsettling. Like dreams, but the feeling doesn’t go away. 

She’s sure she’s passed these roads before, even though she’s never been top side before Duncan saved her life. She’s knows she’s never been to Ostagar, but she navigates around the military camp with ease. Like her stonesense on the streets of home, but there is no stonesense for the surface. 

There is something familiar about the old Circle mage who explains the nature of the Fade to her. There is something familiar to Alistair’s laughter. There is an unexplainable dread when she meets Daveth and Ser Jory. 

Why does it feel like she’s done this all before?

“I see them girl. Hmm, much as I expected.” Flemeth says, looking down at Natia. A tingly sensation runs down her spine, but Natia doesn’t know why. The woods, this house, her face is familiar too.

“Please,” Alistar scoffs. “Are we supposed to believe that you were expecting us?”

“You are required to do nothing, least of all believe.” Flemeth replies, though her eyes do not leave Natia. “Shut one's eyes tight or open one's arms wide, either way, one's a fool.” She could swear by the Stone that the old woman’s stare runs deeper, down into her being. Is that magic? Natia isn’t quite sure. 

A thought that preoccupies her enough to miss what Daveth and Ser Jory say, but not enough to miss Flemeth’s response.

“Now there’s a good lad. Sadly irrelevant to the larger scheme of things, but it is not I who decides. Believe what you will.”

She thinks it well enough to be on her way once Flemeth hands her the old treaties back.

* * *

It isn’t until Redcliffe that the unsettling feeling of familiarity really starts to make her sick. 

Surface-sickness, Natia decides, or something of the like. But no other dwarf they’ve run into knows what she’s talking about. Not even the trader in Denerim's market place can explain the weird sensation she feels. Surface-sickness just doesn’t exist. She stops bringing it up, when Leliana looks at her with such concern. Her companions all look at her sideways when she says she knows where to go, when she names people she’s never met before they can introduce themselves. 

But the town of Redcliffe she knows! She knows it and doesn’t know how or why, but she does. She doesn’t want to, but she spends hours running back and forth between Bann Teagan, Murdock, and Ser Perth. She knows that if she doesn't, the town will die. She convinces the blacksmith, Owen, to make armor repairs even though she believes her promise to find his daughter is an empty one. She bribes Dwyn to assist in the defense effort.

She spends the night fighting the undead, and in the morning the townsfolk rejoice. They are alive and well and the feeling in the pit of Natia’s stomach doesn’t hurt so much. 

But when she walks down the path from the windmill and into the dungeon of Redcliffe castle, a sense of wrongness washes over her. It’s familiar in the way that everything else has been familiar up to this point, but nothing else has felt quite so wrong yet. Like a memory or one of her not-dreams that lies just below the surface, bubbling up in her mind. 

Down the hall she can see a group of shambling corpses gathered in front of one of the cages. She can hear a voice shouting as their hands reach through the bars. Like so much else there is a vagueness to the screaming that is all too familiar, but more so than the places, the faces, and the names. Like a forgotten childhood memory only half-remembered. 

She does not have time to dwell on it though as a walking corpse lunges at her. She cuts through the undead with ease, then approaches the cell. A figure steps from the shadows, Natia sees his face and it hits her like an anvil dropped by the Stone itself. Her - _his_ friend! A childhood in the Tower, the night of the broken phylactery, and a final farewell. Like a suddenly lit torch she knows this man! 

_Jowan_

Instead of clarity, there are only more questions as she listens to Jowan calmly explain what happened; what he did to Arl Eamon, Lady Isolde and Connor. Natia already knows all that though, from the moment she saw him it finally became clear. They are not dreams but memories: Amell's memories.

She picks the lock on his door, ignoring Alistair and Wynne’s disapproving muttering. “Come with me and help then.” She says, holding the bared door open and trying not to seem too eager. It’s hard not to be when she knows him and what will happen if she leaves him sitting in this cell.

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea,” Jowan says. Natia looks at him in disbelief. She’s letting him go and he just wont? 

“It’s your mess,” she says, pointing a finger up at him. “You have to help me clean it up.” 

He looks down at her as she looks up at him, unwavering. Funny, she realizes, Amell had always been taller than him. Looked down in more ways than one. But he – _she_ is Natia Brosca and, after a lifetime of looking up, she should be used to it by now. 

Jowan agrees and runs down the hall and up the stairs past her. She chases after him, shouting for him to wait, but her legs can’t catch up in time. He’s gone when she reaches the ground floor landing and now Alistair is furious that she let a maleficar go free.

* * *

She doesn’t get it right this time. Connor lives, Isolde does not. When Jowan had appeared again with the offer to perform a blood magic ritual to send someone into the Fade to confront the demon possessing Connor, she thought that was where she – he, Amell – messed up last time. 

She shouldn’t have listened to him. She should have listened to Wynne, the Circle would’ve been able to help more than them. But Natia thought that between them they have three mages: Jowan, Wynne, and Morrigan. It isn’t enough: somewhere deep down she knew, but didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to believe Jowan, she wanted to believe he was the way to fix it.

She shouldn’t have considered the ritual – the blood magic. Amell certainly wouldn’t have. 

But she is Brosca now and it is not Lady Isolde who screams over the broken body of her son, but Connor who weeps for the damage the demon caused and the price to fix it.

* * *

When she reaches the end of the Gauntlet, Jowan is not standing there as he did the last time. 

“Hey. What’s shapin?” Instead it is Leske. “You haven’t seen me in months and all you have to say is “Hello Leske?” Not even a: so, how’s hiding from Jarvia so far?”

Brosca actually listens to the spirit with the familiar face, unlike Amell who had banished the spirit before he – it could speak. “You’re not Jowan!” Amell had shouted, swinging his staff down with a blinding flash.

But she is Brosca and she listens because she wants to do better than Amell. Somehow she has to fix where things went wrong. Because why else would she be back? Why else does she have a second chance? There must be a reason, she thinks. A purpose to this. To defeat the Archdemon, as she – Amell – had failed before and to fix what he had done wrong. 

Maker knows he had done so much wrong. He had done just about everything wrong.

So she listens and Leske does help. “Goodbye my friend, remember me.” He leaves her with an amulet, smooth and mirrored on the back with a Chantry symbol on the front. The symbol she doesn’t recognize, not even in the murky memories of Amell. 

Later when she leaves, hiking back down the mountain path with a pouch of ashes in her pack, she thinks that maybe she should’ve solved the problem of the Dragon nesting nearby. But instead she doesn’t look back. She decides that it is not worth the time. Amell didn’t kill the dragon either, but for all she knows doing so might mean returning to a dead Arl and no support at the Landsmeet. 

Poisoned Arls do not live long after all.

* * *

Arl Eamon is alive. His son is too, but his wife is not. He is grateful to Natia, promises support in the Landsmeet. But he is not swayed on the fate of Jowan. 

Natia, a casteless, has never had people listen to her. Why should they? They listen to her daggers well enough, but daggers do not convince Arls of the surface.

They drag Jowan away in chains and Natia storms out of the castle courtyard. She has other things to fix, other wrongs to try to right. Maybe Jowan isn't one of them, but even she doesn't really believe that thought. 

Instead she focuses. She still has other treaties to collect on.

* * *

This time Natia kills the werewolves, bringing Witherfang’s heart back to Zathrian. Amell had slaughtered the clan, this time Natia thinks she fixed the mistake. Even as Zathrian apologizes for lying, he cures the others of the curse and the elves pledge to aid her in the battle.

It all falls apart when she returns home: to Orzammar.

Rica is part of Aeducan House, she bore a son. She’s an aunt to a prince. Her heart swells with happiness for her sister, it’s everything she’s always wanted.

Until she’s standing in the old Dust Town home, where she grew up with Rica and her good-for-nothing mother, and Leske has a dagger in her stomach. 

“Why?” she asks, blood spilling past her lips. 

“What was I supposed to do? Jarvia is pulling the strings and we don’t all get your opportunities.” Leske says, sinking the knife in deeper.

The Gauntlet, she thinks as the pain spreads and her knees begin to shake. The spirit had said he’d forgiven her.

“Go off, be a Warden, rah-rah. I’d have shared a mug for it sure,” He rips the knife free and she falls forward. “But I still gotta live here. Maybe you forgot with all that sun blinding you.”

Slowly her vision begins to fade, her face pressed in the dirt and dust of her old home. _“You’ll die in dust_ ," her mother often liked to snap at her while she swept the floors growing up. " _This is Dust Town and there's nothing else for you. You're casteless just like us_."

It turns out she was right.


	3. Mahariel

Theron grows up with the nightmares. Most of his earliest memories are composed of waking up to the night terrors, screaming and drenched in sweat. Every time he wakes, someone from clan Sabrae – Ashalle or Keeper Marethari – comes to his side to sooth the worries away until he falls back to sleep. 

His Keeper thinks he walks the Fade in his dreams when he explains about the people, the places, and the broken and mixed events that have numerous outcomes. Somniari, his Keeper thinks with a small glint of hope. Hope because she and the rest of the clan eagerly await for Theron’s magic to awaken so that they will finally have a First. 

But the years go by, the nightmares continue, but it becomes painfully clear he will never be a mage. At Arlathvhen a girl named Merrill is traded to their clan as First to the Keeper, and Theron starts training to handle a bow instead of a staff.

He isn’t disappointed. He finds lessons with Junar enjoyable. There’s something easier in fletching arrows than memorizing all of the known history of his people. He takes to the forests his clan wanders, finding home is wherever the Clan goes. He enjoys home: the aravels pulled by halla and his clan-mates. He listens to Paivel, seated around a campfire on starry lit nights, with Merrill and Tamlen by his side. 

The nightmares never go away, but little by little Theron learns to live with them. His days and nights become long and the time is spent with Merrill and Tamlen, the three of them as thick as thieves. The years go by and Junar is happy to name him a hunter. 

Not even the nightmares taint the day he returns to the clan from a hunt all his own. They do not taint the day he sits across from Tamlen, smiling, because they both received the fresh ink of Vallaslin on both their faces. 

Theron chose to honor Andruil, goddess of the hunt. While Tamlen chose to honor Elgar’nan.

But the happiness does not last. 

Deep in the Brecillian Forest, within a week of the Clan welcoming the flat-ear Pol, it happens. He and Tamlen find the mirror and everything goes wrong. 

He meets the bearded shemlen who saved him from the ruin – the mirror – but it’s like meeting a living nightmare. Because he knows Duncan even before he tells him his name; he’s seen him in many dreams before. He feels like he’s having one now, a dream teetering on the edge of becoming a nightmare.

He has the darkspawn taint and though he knows he can’t remain with the Clan, he’s stubborn. He pleads for one last night, to mourn Tamlen, before he goes. He leaves the Clan – _home_ – heartbroken with only a ring and heirloom necklace to remember them by. 

He’ll journey to Ostagar, but he already knew he would. He knows the nightmares are not fade dreams or just mere horrors of the mind. Walking side by side with Duncan, he knows that they are real. 

He knows that he is walking towards a life of war and Blight for the third time.

* * *

He finds it’s good to see Alistair again, and to hear him laugh and sass the mage in the camp. But it’s an odd feeling knowing what is about to happen. An odd kind of calm before the storm. 

Even if he knows the pain that’s coming, he enjoys the trip into the wilds with Daveth and Ser Jory. But this time, when Morrigan leads their group to her home, he has a realization about the old woman.

Asha'bellanar, Theron knows from Paivel’s stories. The Woman of Many Years. The Witch of the Wilds. Flemeth and Morrigan’s mother. Her cryptic warnings of past lives suddenly makes sense. 

“Here are your treaties,” the old woman says as she hands him the scrolls. 

“Ma serannas,” Theron says. He knows the stories always say to properly thank Asha’bellanar. 

“Oh my,” she says with a smile that is all teeth. “Now that is a proper thank you. It seems that someone has finally found their manners.” 

No, Theron thinks. After meeting her three times, he just knows better this time. So Theron bows low to her and leaves. He knows that if she has more to say, that she can tell him after she rescues him from the tower during the battle. 

When he returns to the camp, with the collected blood and treaties in his hands, the kennel master catches his attention. The man asks for a white flower, and Theron knows the kind he speaks of. But the sun is setting, he has a Joining to attend, and he can’t venture back into the Wild’s to get them for the Mabari. 

So Theron leaves with a sad feeling in his chest; he knows he cannot solve every problem of this world. But suddenly aware of this one, it pains him all the same.

* * *

This time around he leaves Lothering with Sten and Leliana. Neither Brosca nor Amell brought the Qunari along; perhaps that is where they failed.

Theron is most comfortable at camp each night on the road. The Dalish have prepared him for this better than the Circle did Amell or Dust Town did for Brosca. But he can’t help but wonder why he’s here. 

Everywhere he goes there are haunting echoes of events he’s seen twice – _three_ times now. The words he hears are too familiar, but the scenarios remain unaltered no matter what he says or does differently. He already knows what the Chanter’s Boards from Lothering to Denerim will have posted. He knows about the abominations in the Circle, the werewolves in the Brecillian Forest, and the feud over the crown in Orzammar. 

He already knows about Redcliffe, Connor, the Arl, and Jowen; but no one will listen to him when he suggests heading to Haven first to get the ashes. No one believes him that it will save time. In fact, no one believes him about anything he says will happen until it does. It is a comfort to nobody, and Morrigan looks at him sideways every time he predicts what inevitably comes to pass. 

With a heart of despair he wonders, can I change nothing? Is this his punishment: to fail over and over, to die and recall every failure, and be unable to change anything?

Creators, Maker, Stone – He wants to change something. 

Still, he avoids Orzammar. He has met his death twice below the earth: once in the Deep Roads and the second time in Dust Town. He will wait before he tempts fate there a third time. He also knows what will happen at Redcliffe, yet he stalls. He thinks if he attempts a different order perhaps the outcome will change. 

He returns to the Brecillian Forest. He meets Mithra and is welcomed to the clan unlike Brosca or Amell were. This time they welcome one of their people back to them. Sarel is not Paivel, but Theron finds himself lost in the old stories and trades some of his own. He helps Elora and her Halla, hands Cammen a wolf pelt, and brings Varathorn a bundle of ironbark. 

Just for a moment, he allows himself to feel at home. But only just for a moment. 

He next day he ventures into the forest with a new ironbark bow. He kills an Oak Tree and slays Witherfang, then returns with the heart shortly after sundown. Zathrian is still happy with him and promises the support of their people against the Blight. 

Theron leaves the clan and forest for the second time this lifetime, and still something about it feels wrong. But he’s done what Amell failed and Brosca succeeded in. He tries not to dwell on the nature of the beasts he cut down, or how he did not betray the Keeper to them when they asked him to. But the attempt to ignore such thoughts is a source of more worry, so he focuses on what he knows he will face next. 

He still has other treaties to call on.

* * *

This time he meets Zevran on the road to Kinloch Hold. It is a different patch of road, which almost makes him hopeful until it doesn’t. The faces and ambush are the same. Nothing of it changes. He brings the assassin along anyway, ignoring Alistair and Sten’s blatant disagreement.

Brosca got along through force of presence. Her daggers made up for what her words lacked. Amell simply did not care to talk to those he traveled with. But Theron, used to working in a group and having survival be dependent on cooperation, struggles with each of their idiosyncrasies. He attempts conversation, but more often than not he fails to find the common ground. 

By the time he reaches Lake Calenhad, he’s cursing his past lives for leaving him with nothing to work with in regards to the group he has assembled. Not that his curses will do much, he has enough evidence to know he is already quite cursed as it is.

* * *

When he finally reaches Redcliffe castle, he thinks that perhaps the third time is the charm. He did it all right this time. Both Connor and Isolde live, the Circle mages were the answer he missed in lifetimes past. The knowledge that both of them can live – that it does not have to be that one lives over the other in order to solve the problem – causes Theron to rejoice. 

So I can make a difference, he thinks! It’s the first time this lifetime that something has gone better, like puzzle pieces falling into place. 

Jowan still awaits judgment in a cell down in the dungeons, but this time he thinks that maybe he can fix that too. That Jowan’s fate doesn’t need to be death at the hands of the Arl or the Templars. 

After three lifetimes he would like to save at least one childhood friend.

* * *

“It’s so cold here brother. The chill eats at my bones.” 

He is not surprised to see the guardian of the Gauntlet wear Tamlen’s face. Only sad that he could not find his old friend or give him closure. He’s lost to the mirror, he reminds himself and knows that there is no way to reach him.

“You seem unwilling to come close,” the not-Tamlen says. “Are you afraid of me?” 

Theron does not believe nor trust the spirit. This time he knows better. Brosca believed and Leske stabbed her for it. He will not make the same mistake.

“Those that survive must go on living. You have suffered enough, thinking that you could have done something. It is time to leave that behind.” The spirit says, leaving a mirrored amulet in his hands. He still doesn’t recognize the symbol. But perhaps he needs to have it, perhaps it is an answer.

“I wish you well my friend. We will not meet again.” 

Theron knows better, but still he does not believe the spirit.

* * *

He is on his way to Orzammar when the camp is attacked in the dead of night. When he sees a familiar face that isn't muddled in memories of lives past. He used to be so handsome, Theron thinks. Looking at his friend and clan-mate now, he is barely recognizable. 

“The song,” Tamlen - the real Tamlen, or what's left of him - struggles to say. “It…it calls to me.” 

And Theron knows exactly what he means. The darkspawn taint does sing, garbled and hazy like a dream until the Joining. Now the song is only in nightmares, with the archdemon raging in the background.

It may be a mercy, but doesn’t hurt any less when he cuts him down. 

“I’m so sorry.” Alistair says and Theron sobs into the night. Zevran watches, hand reaching out and then retreating: afraid to touch him as he voices his grief.

* * *

In Orzammar he knows where to go. He still has Brosca’s memories to help navigate the city. He sees Rica in the same pretty dress he last saw her in. No, he corrects himself, the one Brosca last saw her in. He is Theron now and this is the first time he’s met the royal concubine. 

But it is nice to see her in an actual dress: expensive surface silks and Aeducan jewels. Not the rags of Dust Town or the best commoner clothing that Beraht could fit her into.

But Theron has no business meddling in her life. He has a succession problem to solve and an Anvil to find. Even if he means nothing to her now, he still supports Bhelen. He won’t send her and her son back to a life of nothing in Dust Town. 

He sees Leske again in a cell in the carta hideout. Apparently this time Jarvia didn’t let him out to go leading an old friend to her death. Instead Theron unlocks his door, tells him to get out, and says he never wants to see the man again. A long time ago he shared a casteless childhood with him. He couldn't save Jowen, but maybe he can at least set this right.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Leske says as he takes off. He doesn't look back and Theron tells himself that it is because they do not know each other. At least not in this lifetime. But it’s only after Leske is out of the cell that Theron can see the other body laying in the dirt against the back wall. 

It shouldn’t be possible, he thinks for a stunned minute. But there’s no mistaking what he’s seeing: Natia. _Natia Brosca_. 

Her body has been left crumpled in the back of the cell, but that shouldn’t be possible. I’m her, Theron thinks. I was her, I lived her life before I become me, she was me, I know her, I have her memories. The swirl of thoughts start in Theron's head.

She died a Grey Warden. She died in her old Dust Town home. She died – 

“Are you okay?” Zevran asks, concern on all of his features as he gently puts a hand on Theron’s shoulder. On the side with the piercing that’s in his ear; simple glittering gold. _Theron’s_ , not Brosca’s. He is Theron. He reminds himself but he feels like his skull is going to crack from the splitting pain he feels.

The headache does not leave him until he reaches the surface again. Bhelen sits on the throne, Branka is dead, and Caridin is also dead with the Anvil destroyed. He knew enough to know that that’s where Amell failed and what Brosca died too early to correct. 

Oghren walks with his group now and for the first time, Theron doesn’t know what will happen next. He has no memories to guide him with the foreknowledge of what will come. 

He will have to forge his own path now.

* * *

Time is lost. Theron doesn’t know how long he spends on the rack in the dungeon of Fort Drakon. It doesn’t happen immediately, but after persistence his will starts to fade. He starts to beg with every cutting lash that bites into his bare skin. He begs, pleads, bargains. 

He is so much weaker than Zevran. The realization burns his consciousness while his body remains bloodied and broken upon the rack. His captors snap their questions, turn the rack: cutting and burning. There is no end to this.

Until his torturers are done; or done for the day as they gleefully remind him. After so many hours they drag him back to a cell and leave him on the ground. Like Brosca, he thinks face down on the filthy floor of the cell. Not the Brosca of a past life, but the new one. 

Zevran will come, he thinks. Hopes – then prays. But it hurts to keep his eyes open. His limbs won’t listen, won’t obey, and remain as motionless as when they threw him in. And what he sees through his own hazy, bleary vision is his blood beginning to pool around him on the floor. 

Stay alive, he thinks, Zevran is coming. But even those thoughts slowly start to fade away. 

Wynne had once talked about a will to live. Theron wants to, but it’s good to close his eyes. It’s good to let the pain fade into numbness. The sensation of floating is so enticing that he lets himself be filled with it. 

On the floor of Fort Drakon, Theron lets himself go.


	4. Surana

Neria does not wake up screaming from childhood nightmares like Theron Mahariel did. She keeps her mouth shut when she wakes in the early hours of the morning. She does not want to draw the attention of the Templars or wake the other children in her dormitory. One of the other boys across the hall had too many nightmares, caused fires in his sleep, and they made him tranquil.

She has only ever known the tower of Kinloch Hold; the Circle has been her entire life. But she knows better. This is her second childhood in the Tower, and the fourth she has endured. This time the Tower is different than what she remembers – what Amell remembered. The Templar’s are harsher, their glances crueler, there is nowhere to escape their ever watchful gaze. There are so few windows, not enough light, and not enough fresh air. After her – Theron’s – last childhood among forests and wide open spaces, the Tower feels confined. It is something she realizes that Amell never felt.

How did Amell spend his first twelve years on the outside and not feel the same within the Tower? To have his world shrink to only these halls and be so unbothered by it, Neria does not understand.

Most days Eadric studies with her, always looking for his family name or something to explain the manifestation of his magic. As one of the only other elves within the tower and in the same age group, they have some things in common. Neria Surana has no memory of her family; she has the memories of three others: Amell, Brosca, and Mahariel. But she does not tell anyone that. She knows better than to discuss the mixture of people she knows in her dreams and memories. She knows that both Irving and Greagoir will not view the information kindly. 

She is eleven when she meets a familiar boy with uncombed black hair: Jowan. She knows how this will eventually end: with blood magic and a dark cell in Redcliffe castle. So she avoids the boy, maybe this time around she needs to. 

She is twelve when she sees another shadow. Another boy is brought to the tower: tall, well combed hair and dressed better than most children who arrive. She knows him too, but doesn’t say so. Seeing him almost makes her head split. The Amell he, she was – the part of them that they are – is staring her in the face. 

She has always assumed that she has always been Amell – been Brosca and Mahariel too – but now she isn’t so sure. She always thought she has been reincarnated, but now she has doubts like Theron had doubts when he had looked upon the broken body of Brosca in a carta cell.

That was a lesson from Theron: we do not exist in isolation. However this works – coming back after dying each time – there are rules. She knows from three other lifetimes that there are consistencies and patterns that need to happen, just who they are changes with each lifetime. But if each of her – _them_ exist, then are each of her other lifetimes living out childhoods she remembers without the memories? If so, are they really her? 

Her head is pounding. 

There is an Amell in the Tower, but she doesn’t remember if there had been a Surana when they had been Amell. Amell wouldn’t have cared to notice a small elven girl. 

Neria would like nothing more than to talk to Amell, grab him by his shoulders and shake him. To yell at him for all the horrible things he will do and say. But she knows it would be pointless. The Templars would intervene, Amell wouldn’t know her – wouldn’t believe her – and she knows it will not change anything that will happen.

So she watches her old self scowl and withdraw further from the world. Watches him become absorbed in his studies and watches as he rolls his eyes at Jowan’s friendship.

She watches the echoes of an old life and regrets that she remembers what she witnesses at the same time.

* * *

Later that year they take a young boy out on a stretcher, Surana can see the single arm dangling off the stretcher’s side. His hair, usually combed back and in pristine condition, is wild and matted with blood. The sleeves of his robes are drenched too. 

One of the adult mages tells the group of on-looking apprentices that Amell has accidentally killed himself. An attempted energy spell he wasn’t ready for and practiced away from guidance and the Templar’s protection. It becomes a lesson in obeying the system; in not trying to learn more then they’re taught. 

But Surana knows the truth. Amell had heard and seen the same lesson his first year in the Circle too, he hadn’t bothered to know who had fallen to the Templar’s wrath, only scoffed that the fool deserved it for stepping out of line. 

Now she knows that last time, when she had been Amell, it had been Surana on that stretcher. This time around she watches Amell be carried out. She has her answer: It wasn’t that Amell didn’t care to know or remember a Surana, it was that Surana had died before he had a chance to care. 

Neria Surana bows her head and knows that they mean for this to be a lesson in not causing trouble. She knows that perhaps this is part of how the cycle works for her, for all of their lifetimes. Maybe each of them lives but only one can survive at a time.

When she finds Jowan later that night, he is on the same bench she met him on as Amell. In the back of the library. He is curled up on the spot that Amell used to read in, his hands hugging his knees. 

“Hello. Do you mind if I sit here?” She asks, echoing the words from several lifetimes ago.

“What? No, sure.” He says, sniffles quietly and Surana realizes he must’ve been crying.

“Okay, thanks.” She takes her seat. Looks over at him as he looks back at her. She reaches out her arm, “I’m Neria Surana.” 

He wipes his nose on his sleeve then reaches out to shake her hand. “I’m Jowan.”

“I’m sorry about your friend.” She says because she doesn’t know what else to say. She doesn’t know how to say he’s better off without Amell, or how she lost a past life in an odd kind of way. 

“Thanks,” Jowan says.

“Do you think we could be friends?”

* * *

The years pass and Surana feels like the sands in the hourglass are running out. This time around she’s been a much better friend, but she knows it will not last long. She knows as soon as Jowan talks about blood magic.

“I doesn’t have to be evil.” He says. “If it’s just being used to make a spell stronger, like a healing spell, then I don’t see how that –“ 

He stops at the look on Surana’s face. He stops talking about blood magic, and starts to avoid her. She knows he’s sneaking off to learn the forbidden. She tells herself that this doesn’t hurt, that it is inevitable and that there are consistencies and patters that must happen in every cycle. 

But it does hurt. It hurts knowing that he is learning blood magic secretly and everything that will come after.

It hurts when Jowan comes to her beaming and talking about the wonderful girl – Lily – he’s met. She finds that harder to bear. She still smiles and expresses support even though it feels like a slap in the face. This time around they’ve been each other’s best and only friends, and he still runs to Lily.

This time, when she is dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and brought to the Harrowing chamber, she knows what she has to do. It has been a long time since her – Amell’s – last Harrowing, but she knows what she will face. She knows the parts that matter: Mouse, the Pride demon, and the exact same words form so long ago. 

She passes and Jowan approaches her with his anxiety and his plan. This time she doesn’t betray him.

This time instead he still leaves her there to take the fall. Somewhere inside her she feels she deserves it.

* * *

This time around she breezes through Ostagar and the wilds. Her feet hurt and blister as she traces familiar paths in the swamps. A lifetime in the Tower hasn’t been kind to her on the outside once again.

When she meets Flemeth she pays the same respects as Mahariel did a lifetime ago. This time there is a light in the old woman’s eyes as she says the same cryptic things she has said for four lifetimes now when Daveth and Ser Jory speak.

“Now there’s a good lad. Sadly irrelevant to the larger scheme of things, but it is not I who decides. Believe what you will.”

Boldly, Surana asks,“Who decides such things?” She is not expecting a serious answer from the woman. After three lifetimes she knows better.

“Tis not I, that is for sure. Ask your Maker, your Creators, your Stone, see who answers you, child.” She replies, then laughs. The same laugh echoed in each lifetime. “But alas, so long as the music plays, we dance. And you have quite a few dances in you yet.” 

Now long familiar with the feeling of unsettlement, Neria does not allow the comment to frighten her. She should’ve known better than to ask. She bows, takes the treaties and leaves. 

At the end of the day things are the same as they have been three time previous. Except this time she brings the kennel master his flowers and helps an injured mabari hound.

* * *

This time she braves the Deep Roads first. Oghren joins her group first after the business with the Anvil; all the other life times knew him the least and so Neria tries to get to know the dwarf the best she can. She buy’s Leliana a nug, and seeing the surprised smile break out across her face is a deeply satisfying feeling.

In Redcliffe, after finding Zevran on the road again, she hands Leliana a flower: Andraste’s Grace. “That’s my favorite flower!” she exclaims and Surana smiles at the knowledge from Theron. 

Other gifts she gives with accuracy too. Slowly her group wonders why she knows them so well, most suspect it is because she is a mage. Everyone except for Morrigan and Wynne, who know better about such things. Even they do not understand how she knows them so well.

This time around she does not have Amell’s pride. She helps as best she can, when her help will be accepted. She tries to correct everyone else’s poor opinion of magic through her actions. Where Amell had perpetuated the stereotypes and preached for their segregation in the Circle, Surana goes out of her way to show the best side of magic that she can. 

Except that this time around Sten seems to hate her; or hate what she is. Conversations with him seem impossible and he leaves her on the edge of Haven. It’s a slap in the face; she’s never dealt with that before. She doubles her efforts to speak to each person in her camp.

Sten’s abandonment is not the only sadness she endures as she resolves the problems at Redcliffe with the help of the Circle. They take Jowan again; off to face Templar death in one form or another. She had tried to get him to leave. She had told him to go, but he'd just come back. Like he's done the other lifetimes she's told him to help.

It feels horrible, as she watches him dragged out in chains with a Templar escort. 

But maybe that’s all part of the price of this lifetime.

* * *

She survives Fort Drakon. When she spends time in recovery, with Leliana running fingers through her hair and singing softly, Surana feels the building anxiety of an uncertain future once more. 

She has gotten farther than any of her past selves once again. She knows there is the landsmeet and the looming battle ahead of her. Maker, Stone, Creators help her, she doesn’t know what to do.

But Leliana’s presence at her side is so soothing in this lifetime. For once she allows herself to just be. To just exist in this moment instead of anticipating the future or worrying about the long distant past.

This is her second chance at being a mage and finally she feels like she’s done something right.

* * *

The landsmeet does not go in her favor. The court does not agree with her. Anora was quick to turn on them once she heard Surana’s petition for the assembled lords and ladies of the Bannorn to acknowledge Alistair as the rightful heir of the throne.

She won the brawl that broke out, but it doesn’t feel like a victory when she spares Loghain on the advice of another Warden and Alistair leaves her on the spot. He’s the second person to walk away from her and she wants to scream. 

It’s not fair! This time she did everything right and now she’s gone and ruined it! He leaves and she feels like there is no point to her months - _lifetimes_ \- of suffering.

Certain things are set, that much she knows from each of her lifetimes, but this cannot be how it must end. Alistair cannot just walk away from her like this.

Except that he does.

Loghain survives the joining and she learns the final horrible secret of the Blight. Because of course the world will be so cruel to her.

She spends the night curled around Leliana: horror, anxiety, and grief heavy in her heart. Neither of them sleep as they await the coming battle.

* * *

She is dying in the over run and burning city of Denerim.

Leliana’s body is a few feet from her and she is trying to crawl over. If she is to die once more than she wants to do so next to her.

She hasn’t been the best leader of this charge. Slowly around her the city fell, her amassed army was not enough. Or not equipped enough. Or not placed well enough. She doesn’t really know.

Right now she knows that the Dalish, the last group of her army, were not enough to fight the hoard. Around her all are dying. Nothing has made a difference.

She hears her dog let out a final pained yelp. She does not look, she cannot bring herself to look upon the final body of her band. She led them all to their deaths.

Again, all she wants to do is scream. 

And she does as a pained shout pushes past her raw throat. She’s still crawling, but the feeling in her arms is fading. Her vision is starting to tunnel.

Just a little longer, she pleads as she stretches her hand out to Leliana’s motionless one.

She just touches the tips of Leliana’s fingers when it all finally goes dark.


	5. Aeducan

Up until the day Bhelen is born, they say the youngest Aeducan is the most composed. He does not cry, he does not fuss. Even as a child he is set with a firm determination. People do not understand why the young boy has such a determination, but they say the Ancestors smiled the day he was born.

Duran Aeducan grows up right next to the darkspawn threat and worlds away. The Deep Roads in his backyard are filled with all he knows his future will hold: a hoard of darkspawn and a tired journey to Branka, Caridin, and the Anvil. 

But that is all still a long way off. For now his Father grooms him to be a commander of Orzammar’s armies to one day brave the very roads he’s explored four previous lifetimes. 

He takes to his lessons with ease, eager to learn and posing questions even the Shaperate deem worthy of asking. In this lifetime he learns strategy and the subtle art of talking to people to get the information he wants. The Nobility of Orzammar play a life-long game of political subtlety and intrigue, and Duran learns the game well. In this childhood he learns that both intimidation and persuasion have their places.

He takes to his training by the best of the warrior caste and his teachers remark that it as though he were born with a sword and shield in his hand. They do not know that for Duran Aeducan this is not his first lifetime learning how to wield a blade. The basics from Amell still linger after all these cycles. Or at least the basics from before Amell switched from a sword to wielding a staff. Even still, it slowly comes to Aeducan as it had for Brosca; memories dancing on the edges of sleep. However, this lifetime is not spent in the squalor of Dust Town, but the Diamond Quarter. Duran is not the first son, that right belongs to his brother Trian, he knows that both of them will not inherit the throne but not how that will come to pass. 

Instead he knows that sooner or later Duncan will show up and his life will unravel into what it has been for four other lifetimes: war, blood, and endless tragedy. Nothing really ever changes, no matter how hard he tries. He cannot escape what lies at the cusp of adulthood, so he prepares. 

He knows the sands in the hourglass are running thin when he sees a ghost from a lifetime past: Rica. His – Brosca’s – sister from another life. She walks the halls, a consort to his brother Behlen. She is heavy with child: who Duran knows will be a prince. Duran makes the effort to be kind when others of the House are far less so. 

He knows that Surana’s lesson is true: they all live but only one survives each cycle. On the day of his ceremony, Duran wonders who still lives in the Tower in this cycle: Surana or Amell? For Jowan’s sake he hopes it was Surana; she had been the better friend.

At the feast he spots Duncan in the crowd, taller than nearly all who attend the ceremony, and he knows that his time is finally up. When Bhelen insists that Trian is plotting against him, Duran sighs and knows that this is how it will all inevitably go wrong this lifetime.

* * *

When Duran walks into the bright light of day once more it is with a heavy heart. Nothing is so simple.

Trian didn’t betray him, it was Bhelen who orchestrated the whole thing. It’s a good thing he knew the Deep Roads so well from four other lifetimes, he’s not so sure how he would have fared if he didn’t have such an advantage. Stone sense only goes so far in the Deep Roads.

He would love to knock Bhelen down when he returns again, as he knows he will. 

But he knows to do so would make Rica and her son casteless once more. It will not permit Gorim to return either, he knows.

Gorim – his second – Duran knew he would sell wares in a market stall in Denerim, he did not know that he would be the reason why. If the tragedy of this lifetime is to be marked a kinslayer, then he is at least glad that Gorim did not die wrapped up in it all.

Even if he was exiled, wiped from the memories, and branded casteless. Duran knows that is not worse than death. He has seen worse fates.

Some things he cannot change.

It’s a thought that stews in his mind on the trip to Ostagar. But along the way Duran settles his emotions, puts them somewhere deep inside of him, because he is determined to fix where he has failed in four other lifetimes past.

* * *

Duran mutters the long memorized words under his breath as the King says them. No one says anything, but Duncan looks at him with a deep line in his brow, clearly disapproving. Duran does not care, but that thought lessens and he casts his eyes to the ground as they proceed through the same conversation they always have. 

He knows what will come and he feels he should at least make the effort to make Duncan’s final days as least troublesome as possible. Even if it is a fruitless effort ultimately.

But he finds Alistair again, hears the familiar laughter, and the sting of the lifetime past settles in his heart: He left me. There is a moment where he toys with the thought: If he had been there, would the outcome of the battle have been so disastrous? After this lifetime with a more formal military upbringing, Duran knows the answer.

He buries his feelings. He has to do better.

He has the wilds to navigate, a flower to find, and a conversation with Flemeth to endure.

* * *

Things after Lothering are the same as they have always been. Except Duran leads his team like the military commander he was meant to be; in this lifetime and in those previous. This time around he has the knowledge the others didn’t have, the battle of Denerim and the military strategy to finally succeed where Surana failed.

He has four lifetimes of information to guide him and he is determined to finally get it right.

He engages each of his friends with the same familiarity of Surana and Theron. He does not allow himself to see each of their deaths. He is friends with each of them, no more than that. 

This time he does not allow himself closer to any of them. Between Mahariel’s relationship with Zevran and Surana’s with Leliana, perhaps that is where they faltered: they got too close instead of seeing the wider picture.

This time around Duran does not make the same mistakes with Sten. In this life time they are closest friends, chatting about concepts of duty, purpose and obligation by the side of the campfire.

* * *

Duran walks the world with a deeper sense of familiarity than any of his previous lives. Orzammar is not his only home. He finds his way around the Circle Tower with little problem from two childhoods within its walls. Long familiar with the solution to this particular problem, he solves the conflict with the demons, the Circle and the Templars. Even the Sloth demon’s maze of islands within the Fade bores him.

At the end of the day he sets back out with Mage support. He brings Wynne to Redcliffe to settle matters he knows he will face there.

Along the road things are the same, he is ambushed by Zevran and the assassin joins his camp. Is it still an ambush if one knows that it is coming? Duran does not focus on that concept for too long. He knows he has dead to fight in Redcliffe. 

He sees Jowan in the cell in the basement and turns him loose one more. He doesn’t race up the stairs after him, he knows that he’ll be back. He always comes back no matter what he says when he sets him free. He knows how this will end, in chains at Templar hands or on the business end of the headsman’s axe.

Some events are just set and cannot be changed.

Duran is determined and knows he has the larger problems looming in the nearby future. He hardens his heart to the tragedy he’s seen five times now.

* * *

Duran learns from Surana’s inability to build an army. This is what he studied for, what he grew up preparing for. He collects runes for the camp mages with a bound determination that has others look twice. He knows that the lack of supplies killed them all last time around. 

He will not make the same mistake twice.

This time he buys a control rod off a traveler and finds the Golem Shale in the center of an overrun town. Shale is peculiar, Duran is not entirely sure how to approach them since they are a gap in his collective memories. But Duran welcomes them to camp all the same; perhaps they are what he needs to change the tides of the battle to come.

This lifetime his camp feels fuller than ever, and there is a sense of peace that he realizes that no other lifetime had.

* * *

He walks the Brecillian Forest with ease, already familiar with its paths and how to navigate the mists to the Temple. He knows where to go, but more importantly, this lifetime he has finally learned what to say to people. He handles matters with the old man, gains the acorn back for the old Oak Tree and gains the means to proceed further.

This time he knows the answer to the Clan and the werewolves’ problem: he forces Keeper Zathrian to undo his curse. Both Keepr and Witherfang die and for the first time in five lifetimes Duran feels that this was the answer all along.

Duran does more before he leaves. He tends to the matters of the Clan, as Theron once did. He listens to Sarel’s stories sitting next to Wynn by the campfire. He tends to Halla, hands Cammen a wolf pelt, and brings Varathorn a bundle of ironbark. Theron asked for a bow, but Duran asks for armor.

Duran leaves the forest with some respect and the promise that both groups will answer the call to arms.

* * *

In Denerim he is both saddened and glad to see Gorim in the marketplace, the same as he has been for four other lifetimes. But Duran is not here for his own personal matters, he’s here for Alistair’s. This time around Duran doesn’t ease Alistair into the reality he faces. He tells Alistair what he needs to know: the realities of the world.

They leave Alistair’s sister’s home with a hardened, newfound resolve. Both he and Duran proceed to the gate, they have treaties to call on and a Blight to solve. Right now they have a scholar to fail to find and a town in the mountains to reach. 

There is no room for personal matters when the larger world is calling on them to solve what no one else can do.

* * *

Duran enters the Gauntlet and a familiar shadow of the past waits for him at the end of the hallway. Just as he knew it would, but this time it does not wear Jowan, Leske, or Tamlen’s faces.

“Is there a point to any of this?” He asks the spirit mimicking the form of his brother, like it has mimicked the faces of others each lifetime past.

“Forgiveness,” The spirit replies in Trian’s gruff voice. “You require forgiveness to do what is to come. You face a heavy burden, have carried it longer than anyone should. This is the forgiveness you need so that you can let it go.” 

Angry with the spirit mimicking the form of his brother he scowls at it. “You’re a liar.”

The Spirit twists its head to the side, and a smile curls the lips of Trian’s face when it never did in life. “My brother, I know you are haunted by shame and regret. Let the past stay in the past. I give you this and my blessing. Remember me in times to come.” 

The spirit passes on the amulet that he is no closer to understanding and Duran moves onward as he has in lifetimes past. He collects the ashes, same as before, and then he is on his way out of the old temple.

This time around he makes the effort and slays the Dragon on the hilltop. It is a brutal, bloody battle, but he has a duty to the world to do everything he has failed to complete in lifetimes past. Morrigan screams he is insane, Oghren laughs madly with his axe in hand, and Sten faces down the beast with the same determined resolve that Duran has. 

With the beast’s blood cooling on the mountain's stones, he sets off on the path back to Redcliffe.

* * *

Duran returns to Orzammar last. He is not egger to face what he knows awaits him in both the city and Deep Roads. Yet he tries to settle matters as best he can. He helps a woman from the merchant caste gain an apprenticeship from the Circle. He finds a lost son in the Deep Roads. He traces long familiar steps down the worst of the Deep Roads, kills the Broodmother, and ultimately agrees with Shale and doesn’t allow the Anvil to be used again.

Even while the pragmatist in him argues that more Golems might turn the tide of the battle, he cannot side with Branka in good conscious. 

On the way back through the Deep Roads he takes the time to detour from the well known path and finds Cadash Taig for Shale. He finds their old name written in stone with hundreds more. He places his hand on it, feels the carved names engraved under his fingers. Feels the weight of the long list of names in front of his eyes and knows he made the right choice.

He returns to his former home with a crown, swallows his pride, and names Behlen rightful king. It is shocking to those around him. Harramount is put to the blade, as he has several lifetimes past, but only now does the action settle like daggers in his stomach. He was the one to give him that sword and a fighting chance to find Duncan all those months ago.

But there are things that must be, that much he has learned over five lifetimes. 

Duran knows that he, himself, does not matter. Only the Blight and getting this lifetime to work where others failed does. 

As much as he hates his brother, he cannot damn Rica to return to Dust Town.

He leaves with the promise that his brother will send forces to fight the Blight and the word of the Legion of the Dead’s commander that they will aid the cause as well.

* * *

Duran endures everything in Denerim and the Fort. He settles matters in the Alienage and brings Anora to safety. He wills himself to endure the cost of torture with gritted teeth and a set determination until Sten and Alistair come to his rescue. He has endured everything in this lifetime and those past. 

He will not falter. He cannot falter now.

He still has the Landsmeet to face and the final battle with the Archdemon to complete. 

He will succeed. He will see this to the end this time.

* * *

This time Duran doesn’t argue for Alistair’s sole claim to the throne and Anora does not turn against them. Instead he argues for a marriage to be arranged between them, seeing that as the most sensible solution. Anora remains queen, Alistair claims the birthright he is entitled to, and Loghain will be removed from power. 

He does not allow Riordan to sway his opinion this time. Alistair left Surana when she extended the Warden's welcome to Loghain, Duran Aeducan will not make the same mistake.

He thinks it has worked out so well, that this time he has finally gotten it all right, until he allows Alistair to wield the blade against Loghain and it all unravels. Anora refuses to marry him now.

Duran is a military commander and a dwarven prince. He knows what it means to be married because of prestige and politics. After months of set determination in the face of everything he has endured, he yells at both of them. 

Alistair will be king, like it or not. Except that he leaves the Wardens to do it. 

For the first time in this lifetime, Duran wants to rip his beard out: to lose all composure and scream as Surana had wanted to at the last Landsmeet. Is Alistair set to leave him each time? 

Is there no other way?

Is this one of those things he cannot change? Maybe so, but Duran does not want to accept it.

* * *

When the worst of it is over Duran is still standing. That’s an improvement from the last lifetime. He knew how to lead an army to get him to this point. Fighting the Archdemon was another matter. It didn’t come close to fighting the dragon near Haven’s mountaintop. 

But after all the blood, sweat, and tears of five lifetimes he is here and ready. 

Morrigan had approached him with her offer; to impregnate her with a vessel for the old god and to kill it without the cost of his life. Duran had refused outright, the Warden’s duty does not include transferring the power of the corrupted Archdemon to an unborn being. So she had left him once more, like she had left Surana on the eve of battle. It seemed that the two people who started him on this journey with each life were destined to leave him just before its completion.

Standing atop the tower with the Archdemon on its knees, Duran Aeducan does not lament the matter. Five lifetimes he has struggled to this point and finally, _finally_ he is faced with his reward. He will die, yes, but the Blight will finally end. He has fixed the mistakes of the past and now he’ll have his rest.

He – Aeducan, Surana, Mahariel, Brosca, Amell – they have finally succeeded.

He runs. He lifts his sword and drives it into the underside of the beast’s neck; bathing himself in its blood. He does not hesitate to complete the duty he has been assigned each lifetime: He drives the blade into its skull.

There is an agonizing moment. The beast screams and it pains his ears – or is it Duran who screams louder? It feels like his skin is peeling, his bones cracking apart from the inside. It feels like he’s being unmade. There is a flash of light: white hot and blinding.

Then there is nothing. A shred of consciousness that cannot see nor feel; Duran does not dwell in this state long enough to wonder if this is peace. If this is his return to the Stone, the Creators, or the Maker. 

His thoughts end before he can form them.


	6. Tabris

Kallian Tabris screams as an infant. Fits of rage that keep the household up till late hours of the early morning. Her parents will joke about it when she’s older, when she’s learning how to properly wield a blade as a young child from her mother. She has enough rage in her for the whole of the Alienage. For the whole of her people. 

Kallian Tabis is angry that she has to do it all again. 

She thought she – Duran – had succeeded, had finally completed the cycle, but it seems that there is still something she has yet to do. Alas the music plays and so she will dance. She spends this childhood training: she trains as Duran had trained, for the day that Duncan will arrive and signal the beginning of everything she already knows will come. 

Her sixth childhood is spent in the mud and squalor of Denerim’s Alienage. She calls upon the memories of Brosca: sneaking, wielding daggers, picking locks, and swiping from pockets. She refines the skills that Natia didn’t think to learn: trap making and potion brewing. Kallian does things that no child of the Alienage should do: by expectation and law alike. Her neighbors think her a strange child, so full of fire and determination. 

But people learn not to cross her family. She is eight, watching a drunken shemlen shove her cousin into the mud and sneering knife-ear, when she gets into her first fight. Her cousins help drag her home, beaten and bruised and covered in mud. Kallian does not mind; it will only make her stronger. They are her family and she will be ready to protect them as she knows she one day must.

Except after her mother’s passing her father’s chuckles at her fire grows into sighs with exasperation over every bruise and blister, over each torn dress, but ever with a warmth and softness in his eyes as he gazes down at the wild child the Creators had blessed him with. He shakes his head, sighs that she is her mother’s daughter and wonders how he will ever get a match for her.

Kallian is not worried about marriage. She picks up where her mother’s training ended and builds upon the memories of every past life: Amell’s childhood tutor, Brosca’s Carta experience, Junar of Clan Mahariel, and Duran’s tutors from the warrior caste. Kallian Tabris learns to use a sword against all odds and ignores the looks of her neighbors. 

When the hourglass finally does run out on the day of her wedding, she spots Duncan in the crowd and prepares herself for whatever losses she must face this time. Her only surprise is that Nelaros had tried to fight his way to her. She takes his ring and his sword and gives into the fury she’s held all childhood.

She makes those shemlen pay for laying a hand on her cousin, Shianni. She didn’t understand the brutality the red-head had faced in lifetimes past when meeting her for the first time in the chaos of the Alienage, but this time – after a childhood spent sharing a bed with her – she knows and she pays evil unto evil.

That dress will never be white again.

But she knew it was never meant to be. She was never going to be a happy bride, she was always destined for the Grey Wardens.

* * *

She journey’s to Ostagar and endures the same speeches that she has for five past lifetimes. She races through the wilds, leaving the others behind her in the dust as she cuts darkspawn down with an unbridled vengeance.

She collects a flower, saves a hound. She gains the treaties, makes eye contact with Morrigan’s mother and boldly says, “How many more dances must I complete until all are satisfied.” 

Flemeth laughs, as she always laughs, though her companions look at her sideways. Even Morrigan is not sure how to take the question. 

“Perhaps a few more. But who can truly say?” The old woman says. Kallian swallows her anger, bows her head and leaves with the treaties. 

Back at camp she undergoes the Joining for the sixth time; plagued by the same unchanging dream. A nightmare as unending as each of her lives. She is the only one to survive, just as she was the only one in every other lifetime. Daveth and Ser Jory’s bodies turn cold on the stone steps as she is handed a pendant from Alistair. 

She puts it around her neck, picks up her sword, and prepares to light the beacon she knows will make no difference.

* * *

Kallian Tabris travels the road from Lothering and much has remained unchanged. 

However this time she is everything a Warden should be in more ways than Duran had been. Duran had been a leader: strong, clever, and determined. Tabris is those things as well, but also inspiring. 

“A Warden is supposed to inspire,” Duncan had said on the way to Ostagar. One of several lessons it’s taken her six lifetimes to learn.

She travels far and wide, collecting her friends from the places she knows they will be. She sets out for each of their things, she takes more than just a get shit done attitude. She settles somewhere between Duran’s “only the job matters” and Surana’s “People above all else” attitudes. She is filled with Duran’s resolve, but none of his calm.

She approaches her tasks not with a set determination and unwillingness to stray from her path, nor with her heart on her sleeve, but prepared to do what she knows she must.

The Circle is restored first. She does not allow the Templars perform the Rite of Annulment on the mages within the tower. Instead she walks into the hell she has faced again and again and kills the Sloth demon as well as the blood mages responsible. She saves Irving and Wynne is given permission to join her group. Kallian leaves the tower and crosses Lake Calenhad knowing that she will be back once more to call upon them when Connor must be cleansed of his Demon. 

She purchases the control rod from the merchant on her way to Redcliffe and she detours to the small town Duran had found to collect Shale. She smiles up at the Golem and doesn’t mind when they leave pigeon carcasses in their wake.

On the road she is ambushed by Zevran once more, defeats him one more, and spares his life once more. 

She gives Morrigan Flemeth's grimoire. She doesn’t kill the old woman, she knows she can’t. But she deliver’s peace of mind to Morrigan. 

At camp she talks to Sten, answering his questions about her duty and role as a Warden. She is a woman, yes, but she accepts her place to fight and he is satisfied.

In Redcliffe she fights with more than just her usual tooth and nail, she employs her silver-tongue. She forces Owen – the blacksmith – to sober up, dunking his head in a trough of water. She speaks to him, points up at him with her index finger as he words leave her lips, and promises she will find his daughter in the castle if he gets back to his forge. She forces Dwyn and his mercenaries to fight for the town, knocking down his door with a well-placed kick and throwing a coin purse at him. She tells a young boy hiding in a closet to return to his sister in the Chantry. She boosts moral by handing over Chantry medallions to the Templar Knights. 

She does everything she possibly can for the sake of the town. The people flock to her. Things fall into place because she uses the right words.

In the castle itself, she allows Jowan to help in his own way, ignores his suggestion of blood magic and calls the Circle in to help Connor. It is a tried and true solution, she doesn’t tamper with that. 

Except her silver tongue does not stop them from throwing Jowan back in the dungeon to await judgment. Some things are set, she reminds herself with clenched fists. Maybe she is not able to save the life of one man when the lives of millions are on her shoulders.

She offers Leliana a flower – Andraste’s Grace – the same as she has for several lifetimes now. Leliana’s eyes light up at the gift and Kallian remembers the flutter of butterflies that Surana had. She still has a deep love for her friend, but she is not Surana and will never be again.

* * *

In Haven she offers Zevran boots of Antivan make and continues through the town to where she knows she has to go. She fights her way to the ashes as she has nearly a half dozen times before. 

When the spirit of the Gauntlet takes the form of Shianni, Kallian nearly barks a laughs. “Are you running out of forms to torment me with? You couldn’t do better than my cousin this time?” She asks the spirit while the friends at her back look on with confused looks on their faces.

The spirit smiles sadly. “You still need forgiveness,” It says in Shianni’s voice, just as it has mimicked the voices of all before her. 

“Shianni is not dead, I have no guilt here.” Kallian answers.

“But you do feel guilt that you were unable to stop what happened to me,” the spirit says and Kallian can feel her teeth grind. “You slayed the humans who laid their hands on me, but you were not there to prevent them from forcing themselves upon me.”

“You are not Shianni,” Kallian repeats. “I have spoken with my cousin before embarking on this journey. I know she will recover and stand strong for my people.”

“And what of poor Nelaros who failed where you did not and paid with his life?”

Kallian scowls, “Then perhaps it should be his face you should be taunting me with.” 

It is more a sneer than a suggestion but still the spirit looks sad and asks, “Would you prefer to see him standing here instead?”

“No.” Kallian replies firmly.

The spirit smiles sadly still, and holds out a familiar amulet. “What happened, it wasn’t really your fault. You were caught in the situation, like the rest of us. You have a great task to complete, so I want you to have this.” 

“Is there a point to any of this?” Kallian asks as the amulet falls into her hands.

“A lesson in forgiveness that you have yet to learn.” The spirit says, and then it is gone.

Kallian looks at it in the palm of her hand. Her eyes look back at her in the mirrored backing of the amulet. Even know she still doesn’t really know what the symbol on it means. She sighs and pockets it, then moves on to collect the ashes. 

She still has this task to complete, a dragon to slay, and an Arl to save from Jowan’s poisoning.

* * *

In this lifetime Alistair offers her a rose: preserved and carried so many miles. It’s something she never knew about him in six lifetimes. Kallian knows what he is leading to. It goes against a dozen Warden regulations and, even more than that, she knows what awaits them in the future. 

But still she cannot help herself, she accepts the gift. She allows herself to be embraced by him, loved by him and to taste him on her lips. She knows that the day is coming when she will lose him, but she does not stop herself. Duran was resolved not to be loved, to not open himself to it. Kallian is resolved to her duty, but does not forbid herself from the experience.

In Orzammar Kallian does what she has for several lifetimes now. She shows support for Bhelen. She clears the Carta hideout with a fiery vengeance. She lets Leske out of his cell, and takes the time to arrange the broken body of Brosca at the back of the cell. She owes her old life that much.

After fighting through the Deep Roads again, Branka dies. The Paragon is defeated in battle the same way she has been several times before. But more than retrieving the Crown and destroying the Anvil, Kallian goes out of her way to do what she can for the people of Orzammar. She finds a long lost son and documents for the Shaperate, as well as secures an apprenticeship for a woman named Dagna. When she crowns Bhelen she does it for Rica. 

Kallian Tabris cannot bite back her words. “I know what you did to your brothers,” she says and the look on the newly-crowned King is worth it. It is satisfying kindling to the fires that have burned within her this lifetime.

* * *

On the road once more, Kallian doubles her efforts towards her friends. Wynne talks about the spirit that prolonged her life. Leliana shares her past. She finds Sten’s sword: Asala. 

For Oghren she helps him reunite with an old flame and is there when it doesn’t go as well as her dwarven friend though. 

She brings Shale back to Cadash Thaig for closure and their memory. This time she memorizes some names on the stone tablet. She remembers the names of her past life: Amell, Brosca, Mahariel, Surana, Aeducan. She remembers each of their tragedies and wonders how many more she must endure. They were not nobody, they existed, but this time it is she who lives while they have not. 

She brings Alistair to his sister’s house and eases him through the pain that Goldanna inflicts upon him. Duran tried to harden him, but Kallian knows that in a world so cruel losing their compassion is worse. 

She is the shoulder to cry on, the ear that listens, and the person who does for others and asks for nothing in return.

She tries and tries. Her fury does not falter, pushing her onward to the last trials of her journey. 

She doesn’t waste time bringing Keeper Zathrian deep into the Brecillian Forest. She demands he lift the curse, and both he and Witherfang die to end the miserable curse on the werewolves. She cures the Clan’s Halla, retrieves Ironbark for the craftsmen. She does everything she can possibly do for the people of the Clan before she leaves again.

* * *

In Denerim Kallian returns home. Battered and healing from Fort Drakon, Kallian still pushes herself to return to the Alienage. 

She doesn’t need Shianni to tell her that Elder Valendrian and her Father are missing among the various other residents. She also doesn’t need Shianni to tell her about the back entrance. But Kallian listens and embraces her cousin. She hands her the Chantry amulet and gets to work clearing out the slavers she knows she’ll find inside the run-down apartments. Places that were once the homes of her neighbors and now are barren except for Loghain’s Tevinter allies. 

She puts them to the blade like she has in lifetimes past, but with a fiery vengeance that soaks the floorboards in blood. 

She leads her Father home, supporting him even though she is weakened from battle. He passes on a dagger, Fang. She promises to put it to good use in the Landsmeet to come.

* * *

Before the Landsmeet Kallian lays in bed next to Alistair. His arm draped behind her head and tracing circles around her bare shoulder. His is careful around the edges of her bandages.

She runs the options over in her head, and she asks him his opinion this time when her past lives had not.

His soft grip around her shoulder stiffens for a fraction of a second. “I do not like the idea of an arranged marriage.” 

Kallian nods, “I didn’t either when my father proposed the idea.” 

“I wish it could be you,” he says after a minute.

“We both know that won’t ever happen,” Kallian sighs. 

“Why?” he asks. “Because you’re an elf? That’s hardly –“ 

“They’ll never let a knife-ear on the throne, Alistair.” She replies calmly, not even angry. She knew what she was getting into when she took that rose. “They’d never allow you to take the throne for suggesting it.” 

“Maker’s breath, sometimes I hate it when you’re right.” He says, waits and then speaks again. “What do you think I should do? I can’t exactly marry Anora.” 

“Why not? Anora isn’t that bad, Alistair.” Kallian replies.

She feels his arm stiffen again. “She’s the reason you were sent to the dungeon.” 

Maybe that is where she has gone wrong again, she thinks sadly to herself. It seems not a lifetime goes by where she doesn’t get this part right. She sighs, “It’s not really Anora’s fault, my love.” Alistair doesn’t speak, so Kallian continues. “Loghain can’t stay on the throne. You have a right to it, you could be the leader the people need.” 

Alistair snorts at that, “Hardly likely, but I do appreciate the thought.” They sit in silence once more until he says, “You know, I never wanted to rule. Anora can keep the throne for all I care.” He punctuates the thought with a yawn. He pulls closer to Kallian, rolling onto his side while she stares at the ceiling. 

Somewhere in the night he falls asleep – limbs tangled with hers – but the thought still turns over and over in her head.

* * *

She knows what her choices at the Landmeet will mean. She knows that of all that she has endured she will not be able to do the same with the hatred in Alistair’s eyes or the turning of his back to her. 

So this time, finally, she gets the Landsmeet right. This time she kills Loghain, spills his blood over the expensive carpet. She does not lock Alistair into a marriage he does not want. She gives the crown to Anora, but it doesn’t stop her fury. The Queen is furious with grief and demands Alistair’s blood as the price.

Kallian talks her down. She speaks to Anora – the Queen of Ferelden – like she fights her battles. She uses her silver-tongue to throw everything she has at her. 

“He is a Grey Warden, he cannot claim a title or hold land,” she says confidently, with a sternness to her words. The rule she remembers not from lifetimes past, but from the power grabbing schemes of Amell. “His life does not threaten you.”

The Queen backs down.

That night Riordan informs her of what she already knows: a Warden must die to stop the Archdemon. At the end of the conversation Alistair grabs her hand, holds it tight and he looks at here with a grave worry in his eyes. Never before had he stood there to hear the final piece of the puzzle; the price of all their hard work.

The Maker smiles sadly on his Grey Wardens, for no sacrifice is greater than theirs.

She holds Alistair’s hand on the eve of the end of everything, wondering just how much she must give before the Maker is satisfied. She is twenty, has been twenty six times now, and yet suddenly it doesn’t feel like enough time. 

But she is resolved to end it.

When Morrigan approaches Kallian with the idea of the dark ritual, she remembers the look of deep despair in Alistair’s eyes and Shianni on the floor of the Fort on her wedding night. For the second time she refuses the offer, she will not force Alistair into that.

Morrigan leaves and Kallian watches her go with a sadness deep in her chest. After two other lifetimes it still hurts to see her go. It still hurts to think that her presence had never been anything more than an elaborate plot: a means to an end. Yet something in her yells that this cannot simply be how it ends. 

She’s reached the end of everything and now, of all times, it seems that her fires are banking.

* * *

The battle is almost frighteningly easy. Fighting through Denerim, cutting a bloody path through darkspawn hadn’t been nearly as difficult as it has in lifetimes past. She knew what to do, knew to call on Duran’s expertise. 

She is the leader she always needed to be and people rally behind her. Her gathered armies bear down on the city and before she knows it she’s ascending the tower again. But Alistair is at her side this time.

This time, this time, she’ll finally get it right.

With the beast on its knees, there is a moment’s hesitation as Alistair pulls her aside. He offers to finish this, because of course he does, but Kallian Tabris will not let him die. She grabs him by the breastplate, pulls him down to her as she smashes her lips into his. If this is to be the last lifetime, if she finally gets this right, then this is how she wants to go.

She lets go and she runs. She doesn’t reach for her dagger, the final gift from her father, instead she takes the sword laying in her path. She feels its heavy weight as her muscles protest, but she pushes onward. 

She does not stop for Alistair’s shouts.

She is cutting down the beast, plunging the blade into the Archdemon’s skull as Duran had before her. There is the same horrible sensation of being unmade: unbearably painful. 

There is a flash, blindingly bright.

Then there is nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Personal side note: Tabris is my favorite of the origins.


	7. Cousland

Aedan grows up in Castle Cousland in Highever. After over half a dozen lifetimes, it feels odd. He remembers Kallian’s sacrifice – the same as Duran’s – yet he does not know why he remembers or why he is here once again. Did Tabris do something wrong in the last cycle? Aedan spends a childhood not knowing. 

He is seven years old when a familiar face arrives at the castle and Aedan finally realizes where he knows him from: Rendon Howe, Arl of Amaranthine and future Arl of Denerim. The man who will one day be the reason he is tortured in the dungeons of Fort Drakon comments that Aedan has grown so much since he last saw him. Aedan shrugs, unsure of what to do with the new realization. His brother teases him for the sudden shyness and together they run off to play with Nataniel, Tomas, and Delilah. 

Nathaniel and Aedan clash wooden swords: it has been so long since he had such a childhood. Not really since Daylen Amell, and the realization sits bitter in his mouth.

Duran Aeducan didn’t play, he was too determined. He did not have family friends who brought their children over to run through the castle with; he had the best tutors of the warrior caste and his brothers for childhood companionship. Trian had no patience for him in that cycle and Bhelen schemed a childhood away.

Fergus is not Trian. He hopes that he will not be like Bhelen, though he sees no reason why. Fergus is the eldest son to begin with. If anything he feels like Rica, but Aedan doesn’t know what to make of that.

He feels stuck, somewhere in-between, and he cannot figure out who he is supposed to be this cycle. Most days he feels in-between; reminded of a different life, of someone he used to be. Perhaps that is to be expected when he has lived seven previous lives.

Still, Aedan plays while he can. While there is still peace.

He knows it will not last.

* * *

Aedan is an uncle when he finally wonders if perhaps Tabris succeeded in the last lifetime. Things have gone too well so far this cycle. Life is good, comfortable and peaceful.

He holds his nephew – Oren – in his arms and wonders if this could possibly all fall apart. Or is this his reward for finally getting it right? A good and quiet life far away from the Blight.

Even still, with each passing day, Aedan hones his skills that the previous lifetimes gave their blood, sweat, and tears for. He wields a sword and shield almost flawlessly.

* * *

“Giant rats? It’s like the start of every bad adventure tale my grandfather used to tell.” Ser Gilmore says, cleaning the blood off his blade. 

Aedan would love to joke back that every bad adventure tale really begins with the arrival of Duncan, but he holds his tongue.

His doubts were erased earlier when Duncan arrived on his doorstep. No, that’s not right. His doubts were erased the day his father received the order from King Cailan to assemble forces to fight the Blight in Ostagar. 

Rendon Howe was meeting with his father about delayed forces as the Grey Warden was introduced. Like seeing an unwanted spirit, Aedan knew this was the sign he was hoping he would not see. 

Sheathing his blade, Aedan steels himself for the losses he must face this cycle and for the brutality of the Blight he is to face once more. With the business in the kitchens dealt with, he walks with his hound to his brother’s room. 

“And here’s my little brother to see me off.” Fergus says as Aedan enters the room. “Now dry your eyes, love, and wish me well.” He says to Oriana. Oren asks questions about swords and killing darkspawn and Aedan can feel his stomach sink deeper and deeper. 

Some things he cannot escape.

* * *

The price is high this lifetime. 

This time he travels to Ostagar with a sword and shield already upon his back. He’ll carry the crest of Highever with him this lifetime. His hound stays by his side and that is different too: he’s never left home before with another living being. 

The last few cycles he had to bring a flower back from the wilds to get a mabari, but this time it seems that he doesn’t. But Aedan doesn’t hold out hope. It’s possible he might still loose before this cycle is up.

Aedan is tired, so tired, of losing the same things as he has all his other lifetimes. 

As the wagon pulls him closer to Ostagar, his Joining, and the battle that ultimately will only mean the beginning, Aedan knows that when he sees Howe, Arl of Denerim, in the future he’ll know what wrong he’s correcting this time. As tired as he is, at least there he can still feel some of the fury that Tabris honed and perfected.

* * *

Aedan wakes in Morrigan’s home, like he has in six previous lifetimes. Just once he would like to see the rescue from the tower, but it seems that that is not something he can change or witness. He thanks Morrigan, as polite as ever. He does not mind her short response. She’s as familiar as ever to him, though he knows she cannot say the same of him. 

For a moment he regrets that the friendships have not endured through each cycle for them as it has for him. But it is a passing thought, he knows they’ll grow closer in the coming months. 

The conversation with Flemeth is the same as it has been. It is the same as it was the first time he ventured into the wilds looking for the treaties. This time Aedan asks about Fergus, supposedly he was supposed to be on patrol in the wilds. But Flemeth has no answer, a vague suggestion that he shouldn’t worry about his brother.

Aedan only sighs and accepts the fate that he really is the last of his line. “Flemeth, please tell me, what must I do to end this suffering?” 

“Your path should be quite clear, is it not? You have your treaties, call upon them.” She says, the same advice as always. 

“I believe you know what I mean.” Aedan tries. He knows that directly asking will get him nowhere. He remembers how no one believed Theron Mahariel and, tired as he may be, he has no desire to repeat the mistakes of the past. 

Flemeth laughs, familiar and ringing in the air. “You think you’ve seen it all, but what have you really?” she says. “I have said it before, you are required to do nothing, least of all believe. Shut one’s eyes tight or open one’s arms wide, either way, one’s a fool.”

Aedan stares, then thanks her for the advice anyway.

This time he leaves the hut with his hound and two oldest friends. It is familiar as it has always been, but something else is there too. Perhaps it is the newness of the situation so familiar to him, but he feels as though this is a beginning: the start of something new. Aedan has not felt that in nearly five lifetimes, not since he was Brosca. 

Though perhaps he feels this way because he really is a fool.

* * *

At Lothering he does it all again. He fights bandits on the bridge into town. He helps the towns people, completes every job on the chanters board. He gets the key to Sten’s cage and he collects Leliana from the tavern. On the way out of town he collects Bodahn and Sandal the way he usually does: defeating a small band of darkspawn. 

On the way to the Circle Tower Aedan notices each familiar detail he knows will be important later. He looks over at the small Inn he knows he will bring Oghren back to. He eyes the man sifting through the bones of Qunari warriors, knowing that he will be back to question the man about Sten’s blade before long.

He goes to the Circle Tower, crosses Lake Calenhad as he has so many times before. He has the same conversation with Knight-Commander Greagoir as he always has. The status of the Circle is the same: locked and under attack from within.

Still, Aedan walks through the doors that lock behind him. He fights his way through demons until he finds Wynne. With her he ventures through the rest of the tower, stopping at familiar rooms to grab what he knows he will need. Especially Flemeth’s grimoire.

The way to the sloth demon is the same as it always is. He cuts down the demon pretending to be Duncan. This time he pauses to think how it’s odd how Sloth always thinks this is what will keep him trapped: victory against the Blight. 

But he remembers the words of two Harrowings: “Keep your wits about you, mage. True tests never end.” 

Aedan may not be a mage this cycle, but it’s a lesson he remembers. It seems each cycle is a new test, one he somehow keeps failing.

Nevertheless, Aedan finds his way through the Fade and the islands with ease. He knows where to go to get each sleeping form. He convinces Wynne that the dead around her are not real, he tells Alistair that his sister is not real though he does not say she is not this welcoming in real life, and finally he sees Morrigan call the spirit impersonating her mother what it really is. In fact it is refreshing to not have to convince someone of the Fade’s tricks. 

Outside the Fade things are as they have been. Aedan kills the blood mages responsible for the chaos, he saves Irving and does not allow the Templars to perform the Rite of Annulment. Wynne is given permission to join his group and Aedan welcomes her as always. 

Aedan leaves the tower and crosses Lake Calenhad, knowing it is not the last trip on the little boat. He knows he’ll be back to get aid for Connor after business in Redcliffe is settled.

* * *

Aedan does what he must, the same tired actions and movements of every cycle. On the way to Redcliffe he purchases Shale’s control rod from the merchant and detours to the small town to collect them. He smiles up at the Golem, the same way Tabris had.

On the road he is ambushed by Zevran again, the same tired ambush that Aedan has come to anticipate. He defeats him again, spares his life again, and Zevran joins his camp again.

He gives Morrigan Flemeth's grimoire. Again he doesn’t kill the old woman, he knows he can’t. But he again soothes Morrigan with the same old lie, and something in the way she smiles at him feels different this lifetime. 

The way Alistar felt different to Tabris. And Aedan doesn’t find himself disliking the idea either.

At camp he talks to Sten, answering his questions about his duty and role as a Warden. He is fast friends with the warrior the way Aeducan was in that cycle. The difficulty of Surana feels so far away now. He can’t imagine the camp without the Qunari, wonders why it took so many cycles to get the key.

Each night at camp he talks to Wynne, listening to the same wisdom as each other lifetime. It’s funny though, now he is closer to Wynne in age and still so far. Still, he finds her wisdom welcome: a soothing presence that other lifetimes neglected. 

In Redcliffe he fights the same battle he has five other lifetimes. He forces the blacksmith to sober up and promises he will find his daughter in the castle if he gets back to his forge. It’s not an empty promise like the other suspect. He forces Dwyn and his mercenaries to fight for the town, throwing the same coin purse at him that Tabris did.

He can’t imagine walking away like Amell once did.

He does everything he possibly can for the sake of the town. The people rally, they flock to his lead more than they did for Tabris. At night the battle is the same, he knows where to be. It’s tiring, like much has been this cycle, but at dawn the town is safe and the people rejoice.

He picks the same flower for Leliana: Andraste’s Grace. He knows where to look for the signature flower. Leliana’s eyes light up at the gift, as Aedan knew they would. He is not Surana, but it feels good to give the flower nonetheless.

In the dungeons of Redcliffe castle, he finds Jowan in the same old cell. 

Jowan pleads his case, admits to poisoning the Arl and explains Conner’s magic. It’s everything Aedan already knows, but he lets him tell his tale anyway. Looking at him, Aedan is tired. This has not changed in seven lifetimes. Some things are set, Aedan reminds himself. But that is becoming a tired excuse. Each of his lives does not live in isolation either, he remembers. 

Jowan might not know him, but Aedan does from two childhoods in the Circle. “Tell me,” Aedan says, “who helped you escape the Circle?” 

Jowan doesn’t answer right away. “A Chantry Sister and a friend.” 

“Who was your friend?” Aedan asks. When Jowan hesitates, he tries a different approach. “Were they nice? Did they really care?” 

“Yes,” Jowan says. “I regret what I got them into.” 

“I believe you,” Aedan says. He unlocks the cell door. “Go. Don’t ever come back. I don’t want to see you ever again.”

Jowan stares and Aedan can feel something plummeting in his stomach. He’ll let him out and he’ll just come back again later; just like in other cycles. Just once Aedan wants to change this old, desperate scene.

“I have to help,” Jowan finally says and Aedan knows what he must try. He steels himself; he is not Surana and he is not Amell. There is no childhood between them this cycle.

“Go!” Aedan shouts. “You left your friend at the mercy of the Templars! This is what they died for, so go! If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you!”

Jowan runs, startled like a mouse. Aedan watches him go, listens as Morrigan voices some approval and Alistar shouts that he just set a maleficar free.

* * *

In Haven he offers Zevran the same boots of Antivan make as always. He is not Theron this lifetime, but the gratitude and flirtations of his friend are familiar and appreciated in a small way. He found love in his companions in other lifetimes, and that is a gift he hangs onto even though the others do not know it. He cannot be the people of his past again, but that does not mean he cannot keep their lessons alive.

He continues through the town to where he knows he has to go. The fight in the Chantry with Eirik and finding Brother Genitivi is the same. He fights his way to the mountain, to the Temple, and finds the same spirit he has so many times before.

This time it wears his father’s face. Aedan sighs, listens to the spirit run through the same speech of forgiveness it does with each lifetime. The same mirrored amulet drops into his hand and Aedan looks at the spirit. “I know you are trying to help, but I don’t understand. There is always another tragedy. There will always be things outside of my control that leads me back here eventually.”

“Let me give you a riddle instead, since you’ve become so good at them.” The spirit says as their face changes from Bryce Cousland to Shianni. “Echoes from the past and present still,” it says in her voice before it changes again into Trian Aeducan. “From paths known, from memories guide,” he says before the spirit becomes Jowan. “To tragedy known,” he says before he changes into Tamlen. “To wrongs left unrighted,” and then the form of the spirit changes to Leske. “What is required?” 

Aedan stares for a moment: caught up in the moment of something so _new_. He looks at the amulet, at the same symbol he has not been able to translate six times now. But in the mirrored back of the amulet he sees his eyes. 

“Reflection.” Aedan answers, looking back up at the spirit and seeing Bryce Cousland standing before him once more. 

The spirit smiles. “You have finally learned.” Aedan blinks and then it is gone.

* * *

Aedan thinks staring into the campfire on the road away from Redcliffe. Connor is safe and live, just as his father is. Jowan never came back and that is _different_. 

Aedan sits with the amulet in his palm. Reflection, he thinks. What hasn’t he reflected on?

There are things he cannot change, that he knows. He also knows that his lives do not exist in isolation. There were six other people before him; each life lived before and after he was them. Whether or not they remember being him is another matter, he is the only one to survive this cycle. 

He knows the effects of each life: Brosca will be rotting in a carta cell while her sister becomes an Aeducan, Bhelen fights for the crown now after killing off his brothers, Shianni will try to lead her people through the outbreak in the Alienage after suffering not so long ago, the Circle has felt the effects of Jowan’s escape, Clan Mahariel lost two hunters to an Eluvian and Tamlen still wanders as a darkspawn. 

So what can Aedan Cousland do about any of it?

* * *

Things are the same in Orzammar as they have been everywhere else Aedan has gone. 

He shows support for Bhelen. In the castle Duran grew up in he sees Rica in the same dress Natia always wanted to see her in. He also finds her mother Kalah – his mother in a different life – as she wanders the halls drunk on the best liquor Aeducan House has.

There is a pang in Aedan’s chest as he says, “You must be proud of your daughters.”

Kalah laughs in her drunken haze. “I only have the one. And she only got here by whoring herself out. Oh yes,” she sneers. “I’m very proud.” 

“And what of the daughter that won the Proving? Surely, you should be proud of her too. She gave up a lot in her life to get your family here.” Aedan replies.

Kalah glares, takes another long swig from the dark bottle, “I don’t have any other daughter.”

“You should try to remember Natia more,” Aedan says, turning and leaving the woman to her drunken ramblings. 

When Aedan clears out the Carta hideout, he lets Leske out of the cell. The grabs him by the arm as he passes. “Her,” he says pointing to the discarded body of Natia. “She was your friend, wasn’t she?” 

“What? Yeah.” Leske replies, confused for a moment. 

“When you’re still crawling around Dust Town, you remember who she was and everything she did for you.” Aedan says. Leske stares, wide eyed and nods. He takes off running when Aedan releases the hold on his arm. 

He watches him go. Many lifetimes ago they were friends once, even if he stabbed them in the end. He’s the reason why Natia’s cycle was cut so short. Aedan enters the dingy cell and retrieves the body of Natia Brosca. 

“What in the name of the Stone is the meaning of this?” Bhelen asks when he sees the corpse wrapped in Aedan’s arms. 

“This is the sister of Rica Brosca, royal concubine of House Aeducan. She should be laid to rest and remembered as such.” Aedan says.

Bhelen grimaces, “You surfacers don’t understand. Go toss the Brand off the bridge, let the magma sort that mess out. She’s worthless and I’ll have nothing to do with it.”

“Perhaps she would’ve meant something to you if she conveniently died with a family ring on her hand,” Aedan says and Bhelen stares agape for a moment. Aedan lays the body at his feet. “I want the Shaperate to remember her name, she is related to Rica and should be remembered. She fought the Proving, she won, and in the face of the Ancestors that proves that she was worth more than nothing.” Aedan says, turns and leaves.

He does not care about appeasing the will-be king and one time brother. 

He knows the journey through the Deep Roads will be long and harsh, as it always is.

With Morrigan, Shale, and Oghren at his side he defeats Branka once more. Along the way he brings Shale to Cadash Thaig. He traces his fingers along the names that Kallian memorized. He thinks he’s done the same for Natia, but Duran still needs something. 

On the way back to Orzammar he brings a long lost son back to the woman in the market and documents for Orta in the Shaperate.

When he crowns Bhelen he doesn’t have Tabris’s fire. “I know what you did to Duran.” He says and leaves no room for argument. “If you want your leadership to be marked by how progressive you are, then I strongly advise you fight to have your brother remembered instead of leaving him stricken from the memories. You already won, no need to further shame your brothers memories.”

He gets his assurance that the treaty will be answered and Aedan is satisfied.

* * *

Aedan stares at the ceiling of Morrigan’s tent with her sleeping form at his side. He feels almost at peace. It’s a strange feeling, but it feels like some part of him is finally laid to rest.

At night he reflects. In this lifetime talking to people is easier than it’s ever been. He knows what to say, and how to say it to get people to do what he wants. But more than that, people are more agreeable towards him in ways that he cannot remember in any other life time.

It is because I am human, Aedan realizes somewhere not far from dawn. I am no mage, I am no elf, and I am no dwarf in this lifetime. He does not need to fight so hard be as persuasive or intimidating as the five previous lifetimes, people are just more agreeable to him because of who he _is_.

_I am everything Daylen Amell wanted to be_ , he realizes. 

Amell, in his greed and selfishness, showed the worst of humankind and why mages could not be trusted. Surana showed the best face of magic that she could. In the end she was still an elf, like Theron and Kallian. Natia and Duran had their own troubles coming to the surface too.

It has been so long since he has been human, he almost didn’t realize how easy it could have been. If only Amell hadn’t been so selfish and closed minded.

* * *

On the road to the Brecilian Forest he rushes to the aid of people attacked by darkspawn. Strange, Aedan thinks, I don’t remember this ever happening.

Then there is a wall of fire, the darkspawn burn, and Aedan sees a familiar face. _Jowan_.

Aedan stands there with his mouth hanging open. Jowan takes one look at him, pales, and runs. Aedan watches him fleeing and he laughs. 

He’s running because I said I’d kill him if I ever saw him again, Aedan realizes. But still he laughs. Jowan is alive, not beheaded or dead at Templar hands. 

This is different.

Different feels good.

* * *

After the business with the Werewolves and Keeper Zathrian, Aedan tells Sarel about the two hunters from Clan Mahariel. He tells them how they found a broken Eluvian and how it doomed them both. He tells the Elder and he agrees to remember the two: One who choose to honor Andruil like himself and the other who chose to honor Elgar’nan and how they found their way back to the Creators.

Aedan thanks him and something in his chest feels at peace.

The elves are his final treaty, there is nothing left but to attend the Landsmeet and prepare for the final bits of this lifetime. 

In Denerim, Aedan has his chance at closure for this lifetime. In the dungeons of the Arl’s estate, he leaves Rendon Howe bleeding on the floor.

“Maker spit on you…I deserved…more.” 

“The Maker already did,” Aedan replies. “The Creators and the Stone too.”

He leaves the estate’s dungeon, battered and healing from Fort Drakon, but he knows there is the issue in the alienage to settle. There is much to be done before this cycle comes to a close.

* * *

Aedan waits outside the door to his room. After the Landsmeet and once again learning the real cost of slaying the Archdemon, he knows what is about to happen. Morrigan will explain the dark ritual and then she will leave. 

After spending this cycle so intimately close, he doesn’t know if he can bear this final parting.

With a hand on the door, he pushes it open and sees her standing by the fire. He braces himself to hear this speech once again.

“I have come to tell you I know what happens when the Archdemon dies. I know a Grey Warden must be sacrificed, and that sacrifice could be you. I have come to tell you this does not need to be.” She says. He has heard this speech on the eve of the final battle a few times now. But this time – _this time_ – it feels different. 

_It does not need to be._

He listens to her. Twice now he has denied this ritual, slain the Archdemon, and it has not made a difference. Perhaps this, this is what he must do.

Even after spending this cycle so close to her, it still cuts somewhere deep in his heart to hear her admit that this was still her original plan and that caring for him was not part of it. After so many lifetimes being her friend it hurts.

“Will I ever see you again?” Aedan asks. Wondering more at an unknown future. If he lives, if the ritual works, if he doesn’t end up as someone new as an eighth cycle begins.

“After the archdemon has been slain? No.” Morrigan says. “No, you will never see me again.” 

It does not need to be, Aedan echoes to himself.

He agrees.

* * *

Denerim is on fire below him. Aedan has become amazingly efficient at cutting down darkspawn. The siege of the city was not the challenge it once was in lifetimes past. 

This time Aedan braces himself and rushes the Archdemon with his sword: the family sword he took from his burning family home so long ago. He plunges it into the skull of the best – like Duran and Kallian before him – and there is that familiar blinding white hot flash that engulfs his world.

There is the ever painful sense of being unmade, but this time he can think through it. He is conscious enough to register that something doesn’t feel right. That something feels different.

For a moment he feels like he is standing on air in the vast expanse of white around him. He blinks and he is looking at Amell: perfectly combed hair and clean mage robes. He watches Amell split, distorting as other forms come into existence. First there is a small tan face with a tattoo below her right eye. Then there is a lanky pale form with vallaslin across his face. There is a mage with freckles gripping her staff, a dwarven warrior who stands proud, and a dark elven face who holds Fang.

Everything rotates, as though the ground under Aedan moves, and the scenery begins to blend into something new as it does. It shifts wildly between the stone of Orzammar – Dust Town and the Diamond Quarter – before it becomes the forest, the Circle Tower, Denerim and Highever. 

He is holding his sword – their staff, his hammer, her dagger, his bow – and he can feel the pain in his hands from gripping it so tightly. Trying to anchor himself to something as everything comes undone.

Aedan feels some inhuman sound rip from his throat. Seven voices scream at once, until the images come to a stop and fade into the tower of Fort Drakon. Where the unmoving Archdemon now lays at his feet.

Aedan lets go of the sword – _his_ sword – and stumbles a few feet backwards and falls to his knees.

He looks at his hand – _his_ , not any other hands from any previous life – and feels the air enter his lungs as his head pounds.

He is alive.

* * *

Everything after the battle is new. The clean-up of Denerim, the coordination of aid, the identifying and burying of the dead.

He’s never lived this. He’s never seen victory except for the Sloth demon’s trap in the Fade.

The chaos and wonder of having won is bright, new, and so real. No wonder the Fade never trapped him, this is so much better than the waking dream.

The people are calling him the Hero of Ferelden.

He wanders through the remains of Denerim, surrounded on all sides by friends and admirers who give their congratulations. There are too many corpses: darkspawn piled ready to be burned outside of the city. And the bodies of soldiers, mages, dwarves, and elves who await proper burial.

But among the dead and cheers of victory there is also life.

He spots Shianni taking charge of efforts in the alienage. She is alive and leading her people. He sees Gorim and a dwarven woman sift through the broken remains of their market stand. 

Gorim and Shianni do not notice him. If they did, they’d surely hail him as the Hero of Ferelden like the rest of the people. But they’re busy living their own lives. They don’t really know him and they do not need him. 

Aedan feels at peace about that.

He is not Duran Aeducan and he is not Kallian Tabris. Those people are gone in cycles past but part of them remains in the way they shaped the world.

* * *

Some days later they throw a celebration in his honor. He drifts around the huge chamber, still caught in that shock of experiencing something new. Of living past the Archdemon after six other lifetimes.

Anora wears the crown. Aedan knows that whatever her issues, she’ll sort things out. She'll rebuild what the blight has done to her kingdom. And Aedan knows she will not do it alone, Shianni is a Bann for the elves of Denerim on his personal request. Rica is an ambassador of Orzammar and Gorim is an organizer of trade between the two cities. For the people left behind from his other cycles, Aedan feels he has done what's right.

He sees Alistair standing in new shiny plate, the crest of the Grey Wardens upon it. It’s the same armor that Aedan walks in. Aedan watches him sigh at one of Oghren’s jokes. They still have much to do in the coming days. 

A missive hand-delivered to him came days ago. Vigil’s Keep needs him. The Wardens need him. Him, the Hero of Ferelden and now the Warden-Commander. 

His familiar hound comes running towards him, barreling into him and barking excitedly. Aedan scratches his dog’s ears, looks into the familiar eyes, and smiles. The dog licks his face, turns and runs towards Fergus, and Aedan can feel his heart swell in his chest. 

He’s alive. They’re both alive.

He walks about the chamber listening to his friends chat about their plans and the places they’ll go. They’re leaving him, he realizes. After seven lifetimes they’re going to leave. It is bittersweet.

The thing that brought them together is over. He knows it is time to move towards the next chapter of their lives. 

He hopes they’ll all be alright with whatever it is they do next. There is no knowing for sure anymore.

They do not need him. And that is okay. He has an order to rebuild. Alistair and Oghren will follow, but the rest of his band of friends are splitting to their own paths.

They’re not the only ones who have their paths. They ask him what he’ll do now that it’s all over. Aedan smiles and tells them that he’ll travel for a brief while before taking up the duties of Warden-Commander. He says he needs to find someone and they all smile sadly, knowingly. 

They know as well as he does that he’ll search for Morrigan. He knows she does not want him to and knows that she could be anywhere. 

But this is his future now and he would like to at least find her again. To have their paths cross once more in this lifetime.

Aedan Cousland knows that there are no assurances from here. But there might be peace.

He certainly feels lighter.

And at the end of seven cycles, Aedan opens the chamber doors and steps into whatever unknown is now in his future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the end!!! Thank you so much for the support, the comments, and the kudos! It means a lot!


End file.
